


Roomies

by Gotchayoulildirtbag



Category: Lost
Genre: Angsty road to happy ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Romance, That time Sawyer got shot, The Hatch, Two of the 8 chapters are explicit and warnings will appear in the notes at the beginning of each
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:36:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gotchayoulildirtbag/pseuds/Gotchayoulildirtbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows on from Sawyer and Michael's raft journey and subsequent capture and return to the Losties side of the island.  Sawyer is recovering in the hatch.  And so starts a long and difficult journey towards healing, redemption and love.  There are 8 chapters in this fic.  Two are explicit in nature and there will be a warning for both in the notes in the beginning of each chapter.  The rest fits a mature/teen and up sort of category.</p><p>Please read and review.  Love to hear from you all!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 (Sawyer's POV first, followed by Kate's)

It was the goddamn beeping that woke him. That and the faint swearing that accompanied it from beyond the bunkroom door. Beep, beep, beep! Sawyer grimaced. That goddamn sound cut straight into his head and brought him out in a chill sweat, replete with a collector-set Manson family album of animal fear, pain and fever. He felt every inch of exposed skin become gooseflesh with the sudden flush of memory. Godamn it! He kicked out at the blankets that clung to his legs and hissed as the movement jerked his shoulder.

Fucking beep, beep, fucking beep! What the fucking fuck was whoever was fucking out there fucking doing?

"Freckles-" He said. His voice, roughened with sleep, sounded so loud in the quiet room that he rolled his head toward the door and cracked open one eye. The bedside chair was empty. He felt his chest tighten in alarm, and pushed up to look around the room. Where-

Then he remembered: she was asleep in the bunk bed atop his. The relief he felt remembering that was infuriating. He fell awkwardly back onto the bed. What the hell was the matter with him? What had happened over the last few days that an empty chair had the power to give him a heart attack? Godamnit, he had survived 30 years without anyone holding his hand and -

Fuck that fucking beeping!

That was it! A burst of adrenaline gave him the strength to kick free of the sheets and roll from the bed. He lurched up right, grabbing and hauling until he was on two feet, then pushed free from the bed. His feet slapped against the chill concrete floor as he staggered to the door and wrenched it open. He emerged into the flat hard glare of fluorescent lighting, and Charlie fumbling behind a computer screen, swearing his damned Limey head off. The beeping suddenly stopped.

"What the fuck are you doin'?" Sawyer hissed in the sudden silence. His voice carried clean across the room and the failed muso looked up at him.

"Oh. Oh shit, man." Charlie whispered back, eyebrows climbing his forehead in surprise. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to wake you." He nervously thumbed his chest. "Not so good with computers, me."

"Well, what the hell are you doin' playin' with one? And in the middle of the godammn night?" Sawyer growled, still whispering. But he had obviously lost his menace along with his independence tonight, because now Charlie was suddenly staring at him with a stupid grin plastered across his face. "What?" Sawyer demanded, thrown.

"You're awake."

"Yes." Obviously.

"And you're pissed off." He carried right on grinning, and Sawyer just stared. "Which means you're better. And I never thought I'd ever say this, but it's really good to see you man. We thought you were a goner."

What the fuck? Sawyer found himself suddenly, firmly, on the backfoot. And Charlie continued staring straight at him with a big stupid smile on his face. Sawyer stared. What the hell was going on? A thousand suspicious scenarios flickered through his mind. What the hell was this game? He flailed for an answer but none of his suspicions fit except for insanity (his) or sincerity (Charlie's). Both options made his head spin. He grabbed at the doorframe.

"Oh, shit. Don't fall down!" Charlie scampered, there could be no other word for how he ran across the room, toward him. Sawyer watched him come, still unable to do more than gape. Charlie ducked out of sight and popped up under Sawyer's arm. "I got you. OK?"

"Uh, yeah." Sawyer found himself being dragged back into the bunkroom against his will, but found himself following Charlie's lead like an obedient dog. The Englishman propped him against the top bunk and ducked under it. The soft sounds of cloth being violently rearranged slithered through the air.

Sawyer took the opportunity to glance at Kate. She lay on her side, facing him, one arm curled under her head, the other resting in front of her, an inch from his own fingers. And she was still soundly asleep. He sighed in relief. He didn't think he could take it if she was bearing witness to this. It was one thing to be babied by her, he kinda enjoyed all the pillow fluffing, the mashed up mango and all the sly teasing, but to be fussed over by Charlie – by a man. Shit.

He glanced at her face again. The light from the other room lit up the soft planes and angles of her face. Fuck she was so beauti-

"Here we go." Charlie was back squirming under his arm and pulling him away from the top bunk. The bastard was treating him like he treated Aaron.

"Goddamn it Charlie." Sawyer hissed. "I got it! I got it!"

Charlie did not seem to hear him, but fussed and pushed and carried on so that in the end it was just easier to give in and let himself be tucked in. After a few more indignant moments the englishman was done, and he straightened up to admire his handy work.

"Goodnight. And sorry about the computer. Locke will be here soon to take over, so it won't happen again." He turned way, then back. "You know, its great to see you're feeling better and all that, but could you do me a favour and stay in bed until Jack says you can get up?

There's sort of a pool going you see, and I've got three fat coconuts riding on you staying put."

Sawyer was now sure he had gone completely mad with fever and pretty soon it would break and all would return to normal, so it was ok to say: "only three?"

"Well, I did have four but Claire wanted one to make a bowl for Aaron, so-" He shrugged. "Okay then. Well, see you in a few days." And he disappeared back into the other room, shutting the door behind him.

"What the fuck was that?" Sawyer said to no one.

Above him, Kate smiled.

LOSTLOSTLOST

(Kate's POV)

"What the fuck was that?"

Kate heard the bewildered voice from the bunk below and her smile stretched into a grin. If he was stumped by Charlie then he was going to go into a permanent state of shock when Jack finally released him from the Hatch and let him return to his beach tent. He had no idea what he was in for. She had been (to her own surprise) fielding questions and well wishes from the other survivors for days now, and she had begun to hear rumours of some sort of surprise welcome back party. She held in a laugh. God how he would hate that! And god, how he would hate to know that she had been awake from the moment he had whispered for her.

She had spent so many hours waiting for him to wake, straining for the faintest murmur, that the whisper had sounded as loud as a cry. But such was her exhaustion that it wasn't until Sawyer was already at the bunkroom door that her brain kicked into gear and she fully processed what she had heard, and by that time the patient was having himself a fine time grousing at the neighbours. She never thought she would ever be happy to hear him spouting off.

Rustling came from the bunk below as Sawyer moved around, tugging at the sheets. No doubt he was pulling apart Charlie's re-tucking job and making a huge tangle that he would have to wrestle out of come morning. She heard him mutter to himself. Then everything subsided into quiet again.

Kate rolled onto her back. It was so quiet. But for the first time in days, quiet was ok, quiet was welcome. Silence was no longer for waiting by a sickbed for god knew what end. It just meant sleep, real sleep, for both of them. At last. So she yawned widely in a very unladylike fashion, shut her eyes, and let her heavy limbs melt into the soft hiss of perfect, tranquil, blissful silence.

Then Sawyer started rustling again.

And again.

And then he mumbled something to himself.

Kate frowned. Who would have picked Mr I-can-sleep-through-an electrical-storm would have problems sleeping now. Actually, she would have thought that: it was Sawyer she was considering after all and he was nothing if not unpredictable. She heard more rustling that sounded like the patient was trying to turn over. And then a soft pained grunt that confirmed it. Muttering in short bursts followed.

"Sawyer, what are you doing down there?" She asked, not opening her eyes. He took a long time to reply.

"Can't sleep. This bunk bed is a piece of crap." He finally grumbled.

"The bed is fine." She replied sleepily. "Just lie still and shut your eyes. You'll go back to sleep if you just lie still."

He did not respond and she was just drifting off to sleep again when he started whispering again:

"Fuck it! I'm going for a walk."

"No you're not." Kate sighed and opened her eyes. "Is your shoulder keeping you awake? What time is it? It's probably ok to have another painkiller."

Mumble.

"What?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"Yeah, well I am fine." He snapped. Kate sat up in the bunk bed, suddenly awake. Ok, something was happening here.

"What's going on?"

"Nothin'. 'Cept this bunk bed ought to be chopped into firewood. An' I need some air!" The sounds of rustling bed sheets followed precipitously.

"Sawyer you heard what Jack-"

"Fuck Jack!"

"OK. That's it." Kate threw back the covers, slid to the edge of the bunk and dropped over the side. She hit the chilly concrete with a soft thud just in time to catch the recalcitrant patient before he could put his own feet onto the floor. "What's going on? Is it your shoulder? Are you feeling sick?" She tried to feel his forehead but he pulled away and tried to get up. She pushed him back down to sit on the bed. He glared. "Stop it and tell me what the hell is going on with you!" She demanded loudly, but her only answer was another glare. So she glared back. What had brought this on? He tried to get up again. She stopped him.

"There ain't nothin' goin' on!" Sawyer suddenly conceded her the high ground and resorted to fighting her with words. "Don't need you hoverin' over me like some damned mosquito-"

Suddenly the bunkroom door opened and with it came a bright fluoro starburst that momentarily whited out the bunk room, making both of them blink and squint. Kate turned, raising a hand to her eyes.

"Hi guys?" It was Charlie. "Everything all right in here? Thought I heard voices."

"So you'd thought you'd just bust on in?" Sawyer demanded angrily. His voice was now coming from above her head and she turned to find that he was on his feet, good arm braced against the top bunk.

"I thought I heard 'raised' voices." Charlie retorted defensively.

"Oh, and that makes all the difference. They do things differently back in Limeyland then, peewee? Bustin' in on-"

"Sawyer, stop it!" Kate demanded, but it was like pinging pebbles off cast iron, he was completely unmoved. In fact he was ignoring her completely now and staring intently at Charlie with come-take-a-swing eyes. She turned to the Englishman. "Everything is OK, Charlie. It's fine."

"Yeah, well." Charlie said, puzzled but clearing angering. He was a good foot shorter than Sawyer, but that would not stop him taking the larger man on if the situation called for it. He had done it before. "Get him a sedative or something before he hurts himself."

"Oh go fuc- Oof." Sawyer suddenly snapped and Kate, without thinking, planted an elbow in his stomach. The southerner immediately doubled over and dropped, coming to an abrupt stop when his ass hit the bed. He grunted and grabbed at his shoulder. "Ow. Sonnavabitch!"

"Oh my god!" Mortified, Kate followed him down, kneeling in front of him and grabbing hold of his upper arms. "I'm so sorry. Are you alright?" He was curled in on himself, head bowed, cursing.

"Kate!" Charlie exclaimed, catching her attention again. He was still in the doorway, staring at her in shock, but clearly also as bemused as she was by Sawyer's sudden reversion to the aggressive redneck that had climbed out of the airplane wreckage fists flying… Oh my god. She swivelled back to look anew at the hunched man on the bed.

"It's fine Charlie." She said automatically, staring at the bent head, and still holding onto his arms. She could feel the muscles tightening and relaxing under her grip, and looked down to see his left hand, his free hand, curling into a fist, releasing and clenching again. His right hand was clutching at his shoulder, nails white with the force of the grip.

"O-ok then. I'll just go then shall I?" She heard the musician's boots shuffling on the floor. "Well, uh, just bellow if you need me. I'm only a short scream away." And he was gone, pulling the door shut. The room sank into darkness once more.

"Sawyer." Kate said softly.

"Just lemme alone." He responded without looking up from his slump, but there was no longer any fire in his voice, just a sort of weary routine defiance; the kind of last desperate show of pluck made by an exhausted, hunted animal that just can't run anymore.

She hesitated.

From the moment she had remembered the aftermath of the airplane crash this tantrum had begun to make some sort of painful sense, and his words had just confirmed it: something had frightened him and he was going to make it go away as fast and as completely as he could. This she understood clearly because she lived this as well, even if her reaction was to run rather than to fight.

The urge to run was with her now. He had just given her that option too, and if she took it he would not attack her for it later, rather he would welcome it and things would return to normal like it had been before: he would continue to fight with everyone, and she would continue to run. It was what they were used to, and she could feel the familiar itch to give in to the impulse again. It was almost overwhelming. So she had hesitated, keeping her fingers curled around his arms, feeling his muscles tight and resistant under her grip, knowing that if she let go she would run – and so would he.

But, after being with him for the last few days not knowing if he was going to live or die, for the first time in her life, she did not want to give in to habit. She wanted, no she needed, to break the cycle. She did not want everything to return to 'normal', she wanted better than that. And somewhere inside she was positive, Sawyer would be wanting that too. But it was going to take one of them to make the first move, alone.

"Sit up Sawyer, and let me see your bandages." Kate spoke softly. She slid one hand along his arm and laid it over the back of the hand gripping his shoulder. Every finger was like iron. She was not going to have a hope of moving them without his co-operation.

"Kate-" The growl started again.

"Shut up Sawyer. Now, sit up and let me see your shoulder." She interrupted, keeping her voice calm. He grimaced, lips momentarily tightening and nostrils flaring, before abruptly allowing her to pull his hand away from its death grip and turning away from her to stare at the bedside table. She reached to the side and switched on the lamp, aiming the beam of light at the bandages. Thankfully, they were white. No telltale red that would need her to fetch Jack.

"I'm sorry I hit you." Kate said after she smoothed down a piece of the tape she had found coming loose. She trailed her fingertips deliberately over his skin as she did so, but he didn't even flinch or turn back, so she sat down beside him on the bed, on the far side from the table. "I know what you're doing, Sawyer." She started cautiously. "But yelling at me, at Charlie, or at every person on this planet is not going to solve anything."

"And what the hell would you know about solving anything, Freckles?" Sawyer suddenly spoke, voice like gravel. He turned around to look at her. His eyes were glittering dangerously in the lamplight. She recognised this look too: she had seen it when he had banished her from his tent after Sayid had nearly knifed him to death. It had thrown her then and it upset her now, but she was resolved to stay put this time. No matter what he did. "Hell you an' the road runner got more in common than you an' me, and neither one of you know a damn thing about 'solving' anything. So why don't you run on back to the godammned beach and leave me the hell alone?"

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me why you're behaving like this."

"Oh, behaving like what?" He demanded aggressively. But despite the anger, he was not she noted, taking himself off to get away from her, and neither was he physically removing her from the room (which despite his injuries she did not doubt he was quite capable of doing), so she pushed on:

"Why are you attacking me, Charlie and Jack, when none of us want anything more than for you to get better?" She persisted. She had deliberately moved his space just now, touching him, sitting on the bed, refusing to move away despite every encouragement to do so, and she intended to stay uncomfortably close to him until he cracked. If there was one thing she had learned about Sawyer: if she wanted to get through to him she had to invade his personal space and stay there no matter what he threw at her. After a spell of bucking her, then trying to avoid her and what she was doing, he would usually calm down enough to listen – most of the time. It appeared they were at the avoiding stage: "That's it isn't it?" She went on. "None of us is behaving like we hate you and you can't stand it."

"Oh, and we're back onto that again are we?" Sawyer snarled at her. "Nicely done, Dr Phil-ette. You want me to lie down on the couch now and tell you about my daddy issues?"

"I'm right aren't I?" She persisted. It wasn't really a question. "Do you really hate yourself that much that you'll go that far to try to make us hate you?" She had him pinned now; stare for stare, refusing to back down. He wasn't going to do this, not again. Not after they almost lost him. Not after she-

"You don't know what you're talking about." Sawyer said. He dropped his eyes.

"I think I do." She replied. "You think that no one knows you. You think no one here knows you. Well, you're wrong. I know you."

"Ha!" He spat. "You don't know shit Freckles. You don't know what I've done. You don't know who I am. You don't even know my fucking name! You don't know shit and don't fucking pretend like you do just to win a damned argument!"

"I know some of what you've done. You know some of what I've done. Neither one of us is a saint Sawyer. But I know what I've seen, and that's what counts here in this place. Let me tell you."

"No." He pulled right away from her, not even looking her way now. "Don't start that shit. Kate-"

"Since I've been on this island I've seen more of you than I planned on seeing." She started lightly, teasingly, ignoring the fact that he was now hunched miserable and angry on the bed, so tense she could feel the mattress shaking in tiny sympathetic shivers. If she screwed this up she was never going to get a second chance. So she would go slow, but she wasn't going to stop. "But I can't say that was all bad.

"And I've seen you do some pretty nasty things too, Sawyer, and you have scared the hell out of me. I have seen that."

"Kate-"

"But I have also seen a man who is funny, strong and proud and brave, and not at all ugly, and who never when it mattered, abandoned anyone who asked for his help. And I've seen how you are with Aaron. I've seen you helping Claire and Sun around the camp.

"And yes, I've seen you picking fights with Michael and Jack. I've seen you cross the line, but I've seen you take more punishment than any man I've ever known." She could see his shoulders getting tighter and tighter, she was reaching his limit now and it was time to stop. Before he could explode into something worse than words.

"And I've seen you when you thought no one else was around, you know-" Sawyer jerked as if she'd elbowed him again and whipped around to look at her so fast she was surprised when he didn't snap his neck. She tried not to smile at the open horror on his face. "Actually I haven't seen you like that. I just threw that one in."

His exhalation of relief was almost too comical to bear in the tense atmosphere, but when he looked back up at her, it was like looking at a photograph of a war refugee. Terror, exhaustion, grief all boiling and churning across in his face turning his eyes liquid, and simultaneously taking and adding 10 years to his unshaven face. Kate was horrified. She hadn't intended this! Some discomfort yes, but never this. Reflexive, sympathetic grief suddenly choked her and blurred her vision.

So she did the one thing she could think of. The stupidest thing she could possibly do and what she had just accused Sawyer of doing: namely, anything that would stop what was terrifying her.

She leaned over, took his face in her hands, and kissed him.

End chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Sawyer could not move. Kate was kissing him and he could not move. He should be the one to be doing the kissing, he should be taking back control. But she was kissing him... And her soft lips tasted of the mango that they had shared this afternoon, before she decided to tell him all those pretty lies.

Other women had told him pretty lies too. It was the poor little bad boy routine that Brando and sweet Jimmy Dean had started back in the fifties that did it to them. Something about the idea of there being some hurt little boy behind every rough penny appealed to some women. But it was a dangerous fantasy. The graveyards were full of soft in the head women who thought life was a movie and every bastard had a soft centre just waiting for 'healing'. But life weren't no movie and he weren't no soft centre hero for Kate to play saviour too.

Hell, he had made a speciality and a small fortune out of conning such stupid soft headed women. He used them worse and dumped them harder than any of the others he worked. And the softer they touched him the harder he hit. He never laid an angry hand on any of them, but when they left him they were beat down all the same. They had no illusions left about the division between fantasy and reality. And if it left them a couple of thou' lighter: all the better.

Those stupid fucking women.

Now here was Kate, telling him the prettiest lies he had ever heard: such sweet little untruths they made his head spin. And covering his lips with mango flavoured kisses and cupping his face between her hands as tenderly as a priest holds the communion cup in Sunday church. And all he could think about was how much he wanted to slap her. For real.

He expected better from her, he thought she was smarter than this.

But she was kissing him like she meant it, and his head was still spinning with her lies and the feel of her calloused hands against his skin was overpowering what was left of his senses. He should be thinking of using this soft headed behaviour to some advantage; he should be pushing her away and calling this bluff for the con that it was. He should shove her away and give her a godammned cuff upside the head! And he 'was' thinking about that, about all of it, but he was thinking of it all at once and he could not move with the conflict it was creating inside him.

So he sat there and let her kiss him and did nothing except feel it. And, oh Jesus, it felt like he was falling into slow rolling molten fire; bone deep liquid heat was spreading through every cell in his body. It wasn't like that kiss he had bought from her in Sayid's little house of horrors, but it was exactly the same as that. And everything he knew about women, all his long years of playing them, told him that unlike that first time, this time she meant it and this time she knew it and wanted him to know it too. He had her. He could take her and he could rob her of everything she had, if he wanted to. And she would let him do it. She would even smile as she watched.

It was what he should do.

It was what he had to do. Then she would see what a mistake this was. Then she would realise. She would really see him then, see him for real, and forget her pretty lies and her momentary soft headed lapse. And they would both be the better for it.

But she was kissing him and he didn't want it to stop. Not yet. He reached for her with his right hand, sliding it up her bare arm, feeling the smooth skin against his fingertips. He touched the delicate skin of her neck and moved upward to mimic her: palm against the cheek, fingers threaded into the hair. And he kissed her back.

Reality could wait a few more minutes. So he pushed the world aside and forgot about it for a time.

When she finally pulled away, taking her soft touch with her, he felt it like the final curtain call: the show was over and it was out the theatre doors and back to the slicing dicing reality of the big city.

"Sawyer, let go." She suddenly said, sounding as stunned as he felt, and he blinked. What? Then realised that he still had his fingers tangled in her hair. He frowned, staring at the contrasting shade of his skin and the dark of her long loose curls. They felt like silk. Did all women's hair feel like that? He found that he could not recall. "Sawyer?" He let the tresses fall from his fingers and slid his hand free.

He felt spacey, like he had after drinking Sun's tea.

"Sawyer? Lie down." Kate was speaking again and he turned to look at the darkened shadow that was her profile in the unlit room. He tried to switch gears in his head. It was time to go to work and he had to get his head straight. "Sawyer, can you hear me?" She sounded worried, and show of concern did it.

"Yeah, 'm fine." He mumbled. Get your act together Sawyer! He thought at himself. Get you fucking head straight and get to work. He let her push him back under the covers and reach over him to straighten the pillows. As she did so, her hair brushed his face and he reached up to touch it again, winding a clutch of loose tress around his fingers. He honestly couldn't remember a woman's hair feeling this soft and sleek. Fuck, he had been on this island for way to long.

Kate suddenly closed her hand around his. She kissed his knuckles; the top of his head. "Go to sleep Sawyer." Then he was alone and she was leaving the room this time. Light briefly illuminated the room, then the door closed softly behind her.

She was his. He had her.

Sawyer rolled onto his side to stare at the wall.

LOSTLOSTLOSTLOST

Over an hour passed and Kate did not come back to the bunkroom. Sawyer knew this because he had been staring at the darkened wall for every minute of that time, feeling her not coming back; feeling the silence gathering like storm clouds.

He knew what the next play was in this particular con: he knew the moves blindfold. And now that it was in motion he should relax and sleep and let things take their course. Yet relaxing was not happening. Hell, with every second that passed he could feel himself becoming tighter and tighter inside like a spring coil being crushed under a truck. The mounting tension was making him ache to his bones as if with fever.

And he knew why; damn it all, but he knew why. He had trained himself to be aware of his own reactions when on the job. Sometimes reality got a little fuzzy around the edges and it was vital to have enough insight to know when he was starting to believe his own crap. But this time he wished he had never learned that skill, because what it was telling him was the one painful thing he did not want to know about himself, or her. He grimaced. Shit, even letting the con unravel in his mind, projecting all the possible methods and pondering what he could take from her was damn near unbearable, because every scenario ended with an image of her ruination by his hand.

He couldn't do it.

Yet he must do it.

He was Sawyer: Sawyer the confidence man. He was a no good sonnavabitch and he had chosen and rechosen to be that sonnavabitch-Sawyer with every new con he played out. So he was a condemned man too; damned and damned again by his own hand and the world was right to rain hatred on his head for it. He needed its loathing like a grenade needed its pin. So if he had to remind Kate what a hateful bastard he was he would do it, before she pulled the fucking pin and set off the grenade that was lodged right in the centre of his chest. He could feel it trembling there, like a second fragile heart beat.

So he had to pull this con. He had to do it. He had to.

But, oh god, how? He could still feel her lips on his; taste her soft kisses. He could still smell her all around him.

He curled up tighter on the bed, hands clenching into fists. He couldn't do it. He had to do it… Fuck!

Sawyer twisted restlessly on the bed, unable to find a comfortable position. But slowly the exhaustion of the day took its toll and dragged him down into a tense and fitful sleep.

LOSTLOSTLOSTLOST

Kate hadn't meant to stay out of the bunkroom for so long, but Sawyer's strange behaviour after the kiss had perturbed her in a way that she still could not fully fathom. So she had fallen back into old habits and fled the bunkroom for the bright light of the communal kitchen - just in time for John to arrive to take over from Charlie. Since then she had been hunched over a hot cup of coffee, playing cards with the older man, as if nothing had ever happened. Sometimes, the world was a freaking bizarre place.

She still could not believe that she had kissed Sawyer. But she had, and he hadn't resisted her. He hadn't been exactly responsive, but he hadn't pushed her away either – he just sat there, frozen with his mouth slightly open as if he was in shock (which was entirely possible), accepting the small slow kisses she was giving him without comment or reaction.

It had occurred to her at the time that she might have pushed him beyond his limit, and that at any second he was going to erupt and either thrust her from him or drag her onto the bunk with him. But he did neither, and so she had impulsively, maybe a little desperately, deepened the kiss. But when he still did not react she started to panic. What had she done? God, she had gone too far and now she had flung herself at him and there was going to be no coming back from that humiliation if he didn't 'do' something.

Then he suddenly did do something. With a small shudder, that was more like a rolling quake really, he seemed to unlock in some way and started to kiss her back. And it was just like she remembered from that other, less ideal, time back before the raft set sail. Except this time there was no pressure, no other motivation except what they were doing right now.

And god, did he know what he was doing.

He tasted like the fruit they had been sharing earlier and she lost herself in it, in him…

Kate sighed and bit her lip. For just a moment she had thought they were moving away from bad habits and into something newer and better, if no less terrifying, but his reaction afterward had unnerved her and made her hesitate. How could he, after kissing her with that much raw intensity, return to a zombie-like state. If anything, there was even less indication that he was aware she was there than there had been to start with. She did not know what to make of it, but she-

"Penny for your thoughts."

"What? Penny- ?"

"For your thoughts." John finished for her from here he sat on the other side of the table. His face was all weathered creases with the smile he was sending her way. "You have a lot on your mind tonight."

"Oh yeah?" Kate replied, sending him a glance from where she was intently staring at her cards. The smile she tried to return flickered and died across her lips almost as soon as it came and her voice sounded brittle in her own ears. "How can you tell?"

"Well," John looked straight at her, the smile still lingering in his eyes. "For a start you've been staring at your card hand there for the last five minutes.

"You're thinking about him."

"What makes you think I'm thinking about Sawyer?" She blurted out, and then coloured. Damn he was good. John, for his part, just raised his eyebrows and smiled back at her kindly. "Ok, yeah. I am thinking about him." Kate tossed a card onto the discard pile and drew another.

"I thought Jack said he was recovering?" John asked. "Charlie told me that he talked to Sawyer tonight and he seemed fine."

"Yeah, he's going to be fine. " Kate acknowledged, and then smiled wryly. "'Talked'? That's very diplomatically put."

"Well, maybe 'talked' wasn't quite the term Charlie used, but - " John examined his cards before selecting a two of spades to discard. He drew another. "But that's not why you're sitting out here with me and a cup of cold coffee (Kate started, looking down at her cup); discarding Hearts instead of Spades, while he's back there recovering and you, by the looks of you, should be asleep."

Kate pursed her lips and stared at her cards. There were a hundred and one lies she could use about this one, but very few were going to be of any use with John. He was almost as uncanny as Sawyer when it came to detecting untruths. The only difference was that John usually observed social niceties, or at least very diplomatically skirted them. So, she could blurt out some lame-o reason for sitting out here and John would nod and smile and let it go, or she could tell him the truth and continue down her newly chosen path of reckless indiscretion and see where it got her.

She looked up from her cards, expecting him to still be staring at her, but he was examining his own cards again. The quiet look on his face reminded her of the time he had come across Sawyer and herself when they had been hunting Sawyer's boar. She had been impressed with his insight then, but maybe even more impressed with the way he was able to convey with words what she herself had only been able to express in barely articulate arguments that had had little impact on Sawyer's destructive pursuit. The way he delivered his message had surprised her too: it was done with such kindness that it had taken Sawyer, and herself, completely off guard. And he had never used what he learned about the younger man against him. Ever.

"I- I don't know what to do." She could barely look John in the eye when she finally spoke. "About – about- " She trailed off. Dammnit, this was harder to do than to think about. John sat quietly. He reached for his own cup and sipped at his tea. She took a deep breath. "I kissed him. Just now. In there."

"OK." John nodded. He put the cup down and scratched his chin with a thumb nail. "And now you're thinking that that might have been a mistake. That's why you're out here instead of in there." John regarded her thoughtfully. "And what does he think?"

"I – I don't know." She picked at her cards, making creases in the corners of the thin plastic coated rectangles. "He's- He's such a- I should - Oh, it was stupid. But -"

"Kate." John prompted when she stopped speaking. She felt as raw as Sawyer had looked after their kiss. Her thoughts were swirling, tumbling. She felt faint. "Do you love him?"

"I- No. Maybe. I feel something for him, but then he's just so -"

"Moody." John offered. "Defensive. Secretive. Selfish. Destructive." He smiled at her. "I have noticed." He paused again before speaking:

"You know – I've told you – about Jeanie, my sister. How she died. What happened to our foster mother." He waited until Kate nodded. "Well, what I didn't tell you is that Jeanie and me spent quite a number of months in a Group Home before we were fostered out.

"Those children… They were survivors, every one, but there was something that struck me about all of them: they hoarded. Everything: from buttons to potatoes. It drove our Carers mad finding half rotten food all over the place: inside mattresses, under floorboards, inside cupboards, in their pockets." John paused clearly remembering some particular sad but amusing incident. "It got so bad that if a child left to go back to their parents or out to foster care, the others would descend on anything they left behind like a pack of wild hyenas and steal every last thing. They needed it for currency you see, inside the Home. They needed it for leverage; for survival. That kind of a habit is hard to break. And it's hard to hide."

Kate found herself staring at John. He stared back, intently.

"Another thing, Kate, about those kids, the ones that came from bad situations before they were taken in to care and were in those Homes until they were kicked out by the state, they're all damaged by the experience. Jeanie and I were lucky to be fostered out so quickly, and together, like we were. Those that stayed behind…

"Sawyer." Kate breathed, still staring. John shrugged and fussed with his cards.

"I can't say for sure, but the signs are there and you are right to hesitate. What you might be getting yourself into, pursuing this, is not to be taken lightly. Now I can't say what his particular story is, or has been since then, but the way he's behaved since coming here is informative. I won't lie to you: it will be a tough fight if you go back in there. You need to think hard before you decide, because there's no half way, and it's most likely that you won't win."

Kate dropped her eyes back to her now crumpled cards and frowned. What John said tied up a lot of loose ends, but not all of them. And what he said scared her, but not she realised, because she was frightened of the choice put before her. It was because she already knew what she was going to do, and John had merely cleared the fog away from the trail revealing more of the hazards she had only guessed were there. When she looked back up at John he was smiling at her.

LOSTLOSTLOSTLOST

Sawyer was dreaming – leastways that's how it felt, 'cause time was moving slow as molasses in winter and everything felt distant and unreal and sweet in the way it never was in the daylight. That's how dreams went: the good ones at least.

"Sawyer?" A sweet dream-Kate whispered in his ear as she touched his bare shoulder. Her hand felt warm, and soft despite the calluses. Where she touched him it started a delicious tingle that spread out from the point of contact like an ink spill. He wondered if this dream was going to get interesting. Wanted it to. Hoped it would. But - "Wake up. I need you to turn over. I don't know how you did it without yelling the Hatch down, but you're lying on your bad shoulder. You need to roll off it."

"Go 'way Freckles, 'm sleepin'." He slurred into the pillow.

"No you're not, you just answered me. Now, work with me here and roll over." The hand tugged. "Sawyer, you're really going to want to work with me here or come morning-"

"Mmph." He protested weakly as she pulled him over and he was suddenly on his back and dream-Kate was hovering over him. She smelled real good, he thought with the few brain cells that were active, and that's about all the thinking time he got because in the space of a heartbeat he went from pain free dreaming to the sort of searing agony that sent folks cold-sweat crazy. He woke with a cry and his vision greyed out for a long second. "Fuck! Dammnit!" He flailed around with his good hand, connecting the back of it against her shoulder. Jesus Christ. Motherfucker! Cramping set in all around the wound and down his bicep. He fumbled for the hurt, but couldn't co-ordinate himself as fast as the dream-Kate. She grabbed his wrist and pulled, and with her free hand grabbed at the underside of his bicep and dug her fingers in, hard.

"It's all right. Just breathe-"

"Sonnava-." What the fuck was she saying? That goddamn grenade of his was taking his shoulder off and she was fucking helping it! So what fucking part of this was 'all right'? Then the thought occurred: what if he hadn't really woken up like he thought? What if instead he had fallen in to a nightmare? One where the world stopped glaring at him and started handing out the punishment - letting those he'd duped get in some payback. So this time the world, god or whoever, had let dream-Kate pull the goddamn grenade pin and he was slowly tearing apart like an old rag doll.

On instinct Sawyer found her hand where it was attempting to remove his limb, and grabbed it, but Nightmare-Kate's fingers were like iron and he could not move them. He fumbled and pulled, heard her say something commanding, ignored her and swore and fought her. Then abruptly, incredibly the pain was receding; retreating in waves like an out going tide. The shocking pulses of relief left him momentarily numb and spent and panting like he'd just run a marathon.

"Sawyer?" Kate asked from the darkness overhead and he realised that he was in fact awake. Damn, he felt like a fool. He wanted to push her off him and pretend he was delirious or some crap, but she still had hold of his wrist and was kneading at the cramping muscle and he did not want that to stop anytime soon, so he reluctantly opened his eyes. "OK?"

"Yeah." He breathed. "Never gonna do that again though." He saw the white flash of her teeth lit by the light seeping in from around the closed door. Silence grew in the room again, and Kate kept up with the magic fingers and the pain was fading now to a familiar dull ache. But he could not relax.

Now that the blinding pain was gone he felt as weak as a half drowned kitten and stupidly grateful – stupidly more than that… And so fucking aware of the fact he could not ignore or deny it.

Oh fuck, he just couldn't do this con. He couldn't and that was that. He swallowed, feeling suddenly cold and hyper aware of himself, of her. Even the air chafed at his skin. And he was oh so fucking aware that she had stopped digging her fingers into the cramping muscle and was instead lightly rubbing the skin there, following contours of the muscle with her calloused fingertips, stroking him like a cat. And he recognised the gentle touch for what it was even as it sent heated waves throughout his body.

He didn't deserve this, but he suddenly desperately wanted to. He wanted it like oxygen. But what if he could never be worthy of it? He knew he didn't deserve it, but maybe there was something, some way, he could work things so that he might. The thought was terrifying. It was impossible. No one came back from what he had done without deserving it and he didn't fucking deserve it. Probably he never would. But he wanted it so bad he thought he was going to die.

It was suddenly hard to breathe. He was balancing on one of Mr Ecko's machete blades. He could feel its keen merciless edge biting into his skin and he had to gasp around it.

He wanted her. He wanted her, but despite all her sweet words he knew she did not know him. She had seen something that might not exist beyond his games and his lies. It was so automatic, to be constantly looking out for the weak link, that maybe he was nothing more than a fucking façade and that was what Kate had seen? He did not know himself anymore. Hell, he had been this way for nearly 20 years now, and maybe all that was left was the lies and the games? He was Sawyer. Maybe that was all who was left? Was he even capable of having this and not destroying her someway, somehow? Working the system, working the cons, had become so automatic that he did it as unconsciously as breathing. What if it couldn't stop himself? The thought was suddenly so consuming and fucking horrifying that he could not breathe. His chest hurt suddenly, really hurt.

"Sawyer?" Kate asked. "What's wrong. What's-"

Her voice suddenly snapped his control and he lunged upright, grabbing her to him, and kissed her like he had never kissed any woman in his life. All the years of calculating study, all the finesse he prided himself in, all of that vanished like so much old Christmas decoration as he dragged her to him and crushed her against his chest. The kiss was rough and desperate and shamefully uncoordinated and he couldn't fucking stop himself if he tried. He felt her hands on his chest, his shoulders, felt the points of her nails against his skin; smelled her and tasted the faintest hint of mango and –

FUCK!

He tore himself away as he registered the resistance, the push of her hands against him. Kate rocked backwards. He stared, horrified. Oh shit. He'd just done it. The one thing he'd just freaked out about doing: he'd just done it. Oh fuck! He stared at her silhouetted form and –

She came towards him and kissed him back. He flinched. What the hell was this-?

"Ka-"

"Shh." She pressed her fingers to his lips. "What do you want Sawyer?" She whispered. The question was a command, but he heard the tremble in her voice. It set off shivers of his own. "What are you doing? Is this just about scratching an itch?" He couldn't answer, even when she ran a finger tip down his chest to the top of his jeans that he had not realised he was still wearing until they were two sizes too small. "Or is it about this?" The kiss that followed was like melting candle wax, moulding over his lips and burning him through and through and through.

And he understood then, what she was saying, what she was asking him. And it was not one that required much thought. This was just as well considering that there wasn't enough blood left in his brain for speech. But he could show her, the way she had just shown him she wanted to be shown.

Very carefully, he used his good arm to pull her back against his chest, and kissed her back.

END CHAPTER


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When Kate woke at last, in a warm cacoon of blankets, it was to a partially lit room and quiet voices from the bunk below.

"-make a fist for me." Jack said. "OK, good. How does that feel?"

"Just dandy." Sawyer grunted back, clearly not happy. There was a pause and: "Ok, it hurts alright. Hurts like a bitch."

"Good."

"Good? Glad you think a patient in pain is a 'good', Doc!"

"In this case, Sawyer, pain is good. You've just shown me that you have full movement in your arm and shoulder and so it means there hasn't been any serious damage, no nerve damage."

"Oh. So, that means that I'm ok then? I can get out of this burrow?"

"No, it means there isn't any permanent 'nerve' damage." Kate heard Jack's boots slide around on the floor. "You'll stay in this bunk, like I told you, until tonight. Then, if you have no fever and can walk in something like a straight line without help, then by all means you go back to the beach."

"Well all right then." Kate listened to the anticipation in his voice and was immediately transported back to last night:

"Don't start something you can't finish." She had said, teasingly.

"Oh I can finish, Freckles. I can finish." He had growled back, nuzzling under her chin to kiss her throat. The arm that had been holding her tightly to his chest had relaxed its grip and the hand attached was now creeping under her singlet. Her own hands had wandered too, and she was thoroughly enjoying the exploration of warm skin and muscle, sliding her fingers through the soft hair at the base of his skull and down across the broad bare shoulders.

"No you can't." She said digging her fingers into the firm muscle of his back and dragging downwards in a blunted claw, making him arch and tremble and rumble heated curses into her throat between soft biting kisses. She felt light and airy and heard the giggle in her own voice like the clear ringing of bells. It was bizarre to feel like this when everything leading up to this moment had revealed to her a road that had been, and showed every sign of continuing to be, anything but those things. Yet she was. And she could feel the same sudden lightness in him. For the moment they were just two people alone in a room.

"Wanna bet." Sawyer breathed into her ear. He had manoeuvred both of his hands now so that they were making a steady sliding path up her back, pushing the singlet top ahead of them like a bow wave. Oh, she really had to stop this before it went too far, but- Sawyer kissed and then nibbled at her earlobe – maybe not yet. His hands started to slide around her flanks, but the left one was starting to tire and shake, making its caresses shimmer against her skin.

"Stop! No, I don't want to bet. Now, cut it out. Sawyer. Sawyer! Enough." She pushed at him and finally managed to pull his head away from her throat and get some distance between them. He pushed forward again, but let her push him back. His gaze was intense and heated. "You need to get some sleep and so do I. We're both exhausted." He made to protest, but she pressed her fingers to his lips and leaned in to his ear. "You need to sleep and get strong again. You're no good to me like this." She pressed a kiss to the edge of the bandage on his shoulder. "You're no good to yourself. Sleep and get well."

He blinked at her, seeming to be considering her request, before obediently sliding down in the bed. And trying to pull her with him.

"By yourself Sawyer…"

Now, back in the present moment, she heard the keen edge in his voice and felt suddenly the weighty reality of her chosen path; the thorny parts were once again apparent amongst the new bloom. Thoughts of John's cautions, her own misgivings, the painful echoes of Wayne that still lingered on the edges of her every encounter with Sawyer, and the enormous complication of Jack and what she had done with him not a day earlier, all pricked at last night's bubble of happy unreality. She scrunched deeper into the blankets.

LOSTLOSTLOSTLOST

Sawyer stayed in the bed, obediently, until Jack left the bunkroom shutting the door behind him. Kate was still sleeping and everything was quiet. He stared up at the top bunk.

What the hell were they doing?

He shifted on the bed, feeling the tight grab of Jack's new taping job pull at his skin.

Last night felt like the dream he had initially thought it was, though he knew it had been anything but a fantasy. He could still feel the raw tingling pleasure of Kate's fingers as they raked down his back in one long hard unsympathetic scratch. That one move had told him everything that he hadn't realised he had been needing her to show him: that she did not consider him weak or feel that she needed to hold back for fear of hurting him. She had shown him that she was confident that he could take anything she sent his way. It was a heady rush, and for the next few moments he had allowed himself to sink into the fantasy that he was just some guy kissing some girl, and there were no bullets and no baggage to complicate things.

He had no reason to think things had changed this morning, but his apprehension was growing with the seconds ticking passed and suddenly he could not lie still anymore. Somehow the feeling had taken root that none of this was real - that at any moment fate would kick him in the balls and laugh and scream 'gotcha!' right in his face. Sonnavabitch. He was such as fucking fool and he was gonna pay for being so fucking soft, he could feel it! He had to get out of here. In one violent move, Sawyer threw aside the tangle of sheets and blankets and swung his legs out of the bed. There was a shower somewhere in this suffocating underground lair and he was going to find it. He padded to the door and pulled it open.

"It's alive!" A woman exclaimed in mock horror as Sawyer emerged into the communal room. He looked up with a jerk to see a vaguely familiar looking blond woman standing with Locke. Sawyer squinted at her, unable to place her or find her name in his head. He must have looked mystified because she suddenly said: "Libby."

"Right. Libby." He nodded: Libby, from the other side of the island. "The shrink."

"Yup." She said with a depreciating grin. "The shrink. You don't really remember me too well, huh?"

"Well, no. Sorta. Maybe." He frowned and glanced at Locke. The older man was regarding him with a small beatific smile. What the fuck was going on with everyone? He had got himself shot and suddenly he was everyone's pal? Well fuck this. This was too much. His morning apprehension suddenly blossomed into fear and then anger. What did everyone want with him all of a sudden? What the hell was their game? Well, if they wanted to play - his frown slipped into comfortable sarcastic grin and he switched his gaze between Libby and Locke. "Well, don't let me interrupt the consult Doc. I'm sure Mr Clean here has a nice fat skeleton or two for you to poke at - 'still waters' and all that bullshit."

"Where are you going?" Locke called after him as he walked away. "I thought Jack told you to stay put?"

"Well 'Dad', I'm gonna take a piss and get me a shower. That ok with you?"

"Sure it's OK with me, but you're going the wrong direction: the bathroom's back that way."

LOSTLOSTLOST

When Sawyer returned to the common area, showered and shaved for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Locke was still there: alone this time, sitting at the table with a pile of gun parts in front of him and a rag in one hand. He poked at the pile.

"'Morning." Locke said, casually, not looking up. Sawyer almost jumped, and glared at the bent head in front of him.

"What, you got super hearing now or something?"

"No. You and I are the only ones up and around this morning. I heard the shower shut off."

"What happened to Doctor Feelgood?" Sawyer asked, looking around the deserted room.

"Libby," Locke said with a small, fleeting chuckle, "has gone back to the beach. I was giving her a tour of the Hatch."

"That a wise move? We don't know shit about these people, 'cept that they like hittin' people with sticks and throwin' 'em into holes in the ground."

"Jack thought it was a good idea-"

"Jack-"

"And I happened to agree with him, as did everybody else." Locke poked the end of the rag into the mouth of the gun barrel. "These people are no different to us and we owe them no less than anyone else under these circumstances.

"Now, are you going to sit down and drink your coffee before it gets cold?"

"What?" Sawyer looked at the end of the table nearest to him and saw the mug. What was this now? More games? Sawyer eyed the cup, saw a curl of steam rise, smelled the familiar tang and felt his mouth start to water- He would go along with this, for the moment. The younger man gingerly set himself down in the seat and reached for the ceramic handle. "Well, I still don't think it's a good idea to get too cosy with these people. What about that gun totin' chick, Ana-"

"Lucia?" Locke supplied. "What about her?"

"Well now, did you know she has a gun? One of our guns."

"Yes."

"What, she just hand it over to you?"

"Yes."

"Bullshit. She'd shoot you 'fore lettin' that happen." Sawyer said. And the older man flinched. Just the tiniest of movements, but he saw it and froze in his seat. "Who'd she shoot? It weren't you so who'd she shoot?"

"It was an accident." A deeper, mellifluously accented voice suddenly interrupted them. Sawyer stared at the huge black man who had just come in through the door.

"Shannon." Locke eventually said and Sawyer didn't need to be a mind reader to figure out her fate: it was carved into the tracker's face and Mr Echo's. Shit. Shit. Shit. "It was an accident."

"Ana Lucia is very sorry." Mr Echo said calmly, firmly. Sawyer switched his gaze between the two men. Jesus Christ, they had found Mr Clean's twin.

"I'll bet she fucking is!" Sawyer surprised himself with the amount of anger he heard in his own voice. "Funny that.

"So, she just apologised for killing one of us, handed over her gun, and you just let her come on in and give her the twenty dollar tour?" He demanded of Locke. "So what happens the next time she pops one of us off? You throw her a goddamn party?"

"Sawyer-" Locke started, but was interrupted by the bunkroom door opening.

"Mornin'." Kate emerged from behind the door, blinking, tousle haired and rumpled. Sawyer found himself staring. He squinted, trying to see any sign that last night had really happened, but she wasn't looking at him.

"Oh, I'm sorry we woke you. We were just discussing-" Locke started.

"I heard." Kate shuffled across the floor and Sawyer watched her approach in sudden, tense silence. "Mornin'" She said shyly to Mr Echo and the large man nodded, smiling. "Is that coffee?" She said as she, and the African man, sat down at the table. Sawyer did not have time even to nod, before his coffee was stolen, cupped between strong slender hands, and slurped on and Mmmm-ed over. Instead he watched her savour it and was reminded of the way she had taken the same slow appreciation in the kisses she had given him last night. He had to shift in his seat.

"It was an accident Sawyer." She said to him after a long caffeinated moment and looked at him for the first time. "Shannon ran out of the bushes and-"

"Fuck." Sawyer said, frowning. Clearly a lot had happened since he'd been brought in here and he had to get a handle on it, but- "Where's she buried? Next to her brother." He couldn't stop that last bit coming out like a demand, though the thing must have long been decided and done with. And why the fuck should it matter. Dead was dead. What the hell was wrong with the world this morning?

"Yes." Kate said, eyeing him strangely over the lip of his coffee cup. "The funeral was held yesterday."

"Fuck." Sawyer said again, and stared at the table. His shoulder was starting to ache again, and despite the hot shower he was starting to chill uncomfortably. He reached up and cupped a hand around his shoulder. There was muttering around the table, but he didn't listen to it, and then there was another hand on his shoulder, or at least around his hand as it rested there. He looked up, looked around the table and frowned.

"They've gone to check out the stores or something." Kate said. "Hurting again huh?" She rubbed the back of his fingers before pulling her hand away. "Come on, back to bed."

He followed her as she walked back to the bunkroom, thinking about Shannon – thinking about how fucking annoying she was and strangely, how weird it would be to go back to the beach and not see that sexy little switch parading around like this was Cancun rather than some dangerous hellhole full of psychotic pigs and crazy people.

It wasn't until he had downed a glass of water that Kate had handed him, and was sitting back on the bunk bed that he was able to pull himself out of his thoughts.

"What's going on?" He asked, suddenly unable to look at her. Fucking ironic, he thought with sudden bleakness, how he could look a con in the eye and ask her any intimate thing, but could not make it passed Kate's shoulders to ask such as simple question.

"What do you mean?" She asked, though she clearly had some idea. He could hear the sudden tension in her voice.

"This." He came within an inch of touching her, but somehow couldn't push through the last layer of air. "Are we-?" He started. Shit, this was like pulling the bullet out all over again. "Is this, real? Are you playing me- Cause if you are, I-"

Fuck. Now he'd done it and now he'd let her know it. This was fucking stupid, he was such a pathetic fool. If she shot him down right now and told the whole fucking camp about it he would deserve nothing less. He heard her pad across the room and heard the door move on its hinges. Well, that just answered every- The lock clicked.

What the-?

"How many times do I have to tell you," Kate was padding back across the room towards him, "so that you will believe me?" She kept right on coming until she was heavy in his lap, arms around his shoulders and fingers threaded through his hair. She looked him in the eye without flinching, holding him there like a hypnotist. "I guess words are not going to cut it."

And she kissed him, hard. The shock of her ferocity froze him solid for a moment, but only for a moment – then he kissed her back and the world shrank to the bunk bed.

End Chapter

Next one is the first of the 'naughty' ones....


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OK, this is the first of the chapters with explicit content. Be warned!

More warnings - explicit content ahead. Please don't read it if you don't want to see that sort of thing.

 

 

Chapter 4

Kate was suddenly very glad she had locked the bunkroom door because as of right now there was no way she could move from the bed to the door if someone tried to come in – even if the whole island population did a conga line through the room and stopped to take photos there was not a chance that she could stop.

Within moments of her settling into Sawyer's lap and taking his mouth in another long heated kiss, the injured man had turned the tables, whirling her underneath him on the narrow cot. She still did not know how he had done it without using his injured arm, but he had and now she didn't care long as he kept on doing- Oh! She tensed, quivering, clutching convulsively at his shoulders, his head.

Sawyer had, almost in the same movement that had taken them onto the bed, pushed her singlet top up until it was bunched up tight under her arms.

"Well now." He had drawled, tugging at the black faux-lace bra strap where it disappeared under the crumpled singlet. "Lookee here. Where did you find somethin' pretty as this on this sandbox, Sassafrass?" His accent had thickened she thought foggily, and the soft melodic cadence of it was suddenly intensely erotic.

He didn't wait for an answer and Kate bit down on a moan as fingers slid down along the strap from the bunched singlet and over her breast. Her eyes fluttered shut as his thumb found her nipple through the thin lace of her bra and started a lazy circle around the stiffening tip. She arched into the touch and heard him chuckle. The laugh was as lazy and self-confident as the fingers working on her breast. Entirely too smug she thought, and pushed one of her legs between his, pushing upward until he stopped laughing, stopped doing anything. She peeled open one eye and grinned at the startled look on his face.

He caught her watching him, and his expression darkened into something reminiscent of the tropical storms that visited the island – powerful, sultry and dangerous. She felt her heart begin to race. Oh god, she did not need to have seen that look before to recognise the challenge, the fiercely focussed desire, she saw in it. Oh god…

Without breaking eye contact, Sawyer undid the clasp at the front of her bra and flicked the flimsy material to either side with the all the cool and careless indifference of a waiter flicking napkins across the laps of his customers. Both of her nipples immediately hardened in the cool air, but Sawyer did not look down. Instead he replaced his hand on her breast, thumb rubbing over the stiffened tip, and moved his face closer to hers, his open mouth stopping a hair's breadth away from hers, teasing and hovering, his hot breath tingling against her sensitised lips. She convulsed against him, head swimming, legs closing over his thigh, as bolts of pleasure pulsed from her nipple straight down to her groin. This time she could not stop the moan and she pushed forward searching for his mouth, but he was no longer there.

She looked down; watching him as he ducked lower, and then his lips were replacing his thumb around her nipple…

So now she was clinging helplessly, curled over his head, fingers sliding over the smooth skin of his arched back, as the southerner applied himself to her breasts. At some point, she couldn't gather her thoughts to place the exact moment, he that busy hand away from her chest, slid it down her stomach and pushed it into the front of her jeans, popping the button and freeing the zipper as he slipped inside the denim. He found her matching faux-lace panties and suddenly he was pulling away from her chest to examine what he had discovered.

"Well." He breathed, his voice rolling into an appreciative growl. "Ain't that a thing? Where'd you get this twin set Momma? Didn't see nothing like this in the wreckage, and I'd have noticed. 'Fact, I'd more than notic-"

"You talk to much Sawyer."

"Well, now is that a fact." He was still sounding way too smug, but was savvy enough this time to trap her thigh between both of his before she could retaliate again. She pushed against him without success and he grinned down at her, clearly enjoying the fact that his strength had given him the upper hand. "But, I guess I can take a hint." He said, as his fingers slipped underneath the lacy material. "Though a more sensitive man than myself," he continued, sliding two fingers inside to nudge at her clitoris, then sliding over it into the wet heat of her body. She arched against him. "Could be a might hurt by that remark." He did not stop even when he had penetrated her, pushing in to her with slow thrusts of his hand, deeper and deeper, until she was squirming against him. Then he was pulling the fingers free, bringing moisture with them, and smearing it over and around her clitoris with all the care of a jeweller polishing a rare gem. He pushed inside her again, then pulled out and repeated the slow waltzing motion over her clitoris. And then again. And again. Starting a slick rhythm that turned her legs to jelly, even as her hands clutched in mindless, clawing spasms.

"I guess it's lucky for you I ain't no sensitive man, Freckles." He concluded, pushing in close again to plant a rough trail of kisses back down her chest.

"Oh, oh god. Sawyer. What are you-?" She gasped and groaned and shuddered against him as the pleasure coiled and coiled within her. "Oh my god." She thrust against his fingers, meeting each penetration with mindless greed, and squirming against them when they made their slow massaging pass over her clitoris.

And his mouth, oh god, his mouth on her nipples, biting and sucking and knowing exactly when and how much pressure to send shocking bolts of pleasure straight to her clitoris as his fingers passed over it, so that she could barely breathe now let alone think. This was just as well as she knew, in some small fraction of her brain that was still functioning, that she had fallen against him, legs splayed like some obscene centrefold model, all control gone, scrabbling at his back and his shoulders, sobbing in pleasure, completely and helplessly surrendered to him.

Then suddenly he was surging upwards in her arms, moving until his head was level with hers. Her hands fell away from him, and she fell onto her back onto the narrow cot. He followed her movement until he was lying alongside her, propped on the elbow of his good arm, his left hand still buried between her legs, making its lazy unhurried way around its circuit.

Oh god, where did he learn this? Kate thought as she followed its lead, rocking her hips in time with him.

"What was that Freckles?" He asked her as his fingers continued their obscene dance. He leaned over her and stole a feather-light kiss. "Didn't catch it?" She stared at him, at his self-satisfied cat-ate-the-cream expression, but was unable to string two thoughts together to answer which seemed to please him no end. He dug into her again and she arched, gasping, as he found the sweet spot. She panted against the almost unbearable pleasure. Then he stopped. It took a moment for her to register the cessation. "You want me to stop? That it? Come on darlin', tell me what you want?" He made small circles inside her and she shimmied against him. He stopped again, but this time she took the initiative and grabbed that hand to grind herself against it, panting. With her free hand she took his mouth's place on her nipple. "Oh fuck, Freckles! Jesus." Sawyer's exclamation was anything but conceited now. In fact it was more of a moan. And his hips jerked against her thigh. She watched his eyes fixate on their hands between her legs.

Using that fraction of brain still available, Kate recognised the look of pure brainless arousal on his face and decided to take back the advantage. He might have the upper hand physically, but that didn't mean that he was in charge and she had all she needed now to use his greater strength against him. There was more than one way to skin a cat…

Using all of her willpower and not a little wriggling, Kate pulled his hand away from her.

"What-?" He stared at her, stunned, as she worked free of their tangle of limbs and slipped off the bed. It took more time than she expected, she was all thumbs and still jelly legged, but eventually the jeans were gone, and the panties, singlet and bra were gone, and she climbed back on to the bed, settling beside him once more. She picked up his hand and guided it back between her legs, gasping with the chill as his wet fingers curled around her. She let her legs fall open, holding his hand in place.

"You wanted to know what I want Sawyer? Well, I want you to finish. You told me you could last night and now I want to see you to do it." She goaded. "And I want you to watch." She heard the unsteady breath, watched him shiver, and then gasped herself as she felt his fingers push inside her again. This time she let the pleasure out in a long satisfied groan, stretching luxuriously, arching her back deliberately putting on a show. It worked immediately.

"Orright Freckles." She heard his growl and felt him begin that same slow rhythm in and out of her again. His lips were right next to her ear. "But, I'm a pro here you understand, and you ain't gonna last the distance."

"Wanna bet?" She spread her legs for him as he began to increase the speed and depth of his thrusting fingers. Oh god, it felt so good. She was starting to lose it already and they had barely started.

"Sure." He rasped. "What's the stakes?"

"How about – oh!" She bucked in his hand as he found her g-spot again. "Cheater!" She panted and he chuckled: it was a dirty sound. "Ok, when you don't finish, you'll do my laundry for a week. No. Two weeks."

"Confident ain't cha? 'When' my ass." Sawyer replied, but despite the cocky words he was starting to sound as breathless as she was. "OK then, when 'you' don't last you gotta play fetch for water back on the beach. For two weeks."

"Deal."

"Deal."

"Oh, and one last thing." She fumbled for his zipper. "Not that I don't trust you, but I want proof when you flunk out." She didn't need to search for his cock. It sprang free from his jeans, long and thick and throbbing in her hand. Oh my god. A shock of pleasure jolted her from head to foot.

"OK fine. Bring it on, Barbarella." And he began to fuck her with his fingers, eyes fixed as promised.

"Oh, oh god." Kate let herself begin to ripple against his hand, a full body motion that peaked each time in an upward thrust that swallowed up the long fingers, then dropped down for the withdrawal, and rose again to push against the fingers massaging her clitoris. Then repeat. They were dancing, she thought through the pleasure fog. Their own private waltz. "Oh god Sawyer! Feels so good. Yes, like that. Again." She dissolved into sensation, barely hanging on from orgasm, and urged him on: deeper, harder, faster. And she could hear him swearing now, through the panting, through the shaking in his fingers.

Oh god, she couldn't stop it. The pleasure was building so fast, so completely, that she wasn't going to make it. He was pushing inside her now, rubbing his fingers against her g-spot, thumb working over her clitoris and she was babbling and shimmying around him, one hand fisting the pillow above her head and the other fisting his cock without her even thinking about it, and now her legs spread and braced as she thrust recklessly. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.

And suddenly she was coming apart at the seams. The orgasm was volcanic, erupting in a geyser of ecstacy, starting where his knowing fingers were pushed inside her and gushing out along each limb, throughout every cell in her body. And it went on and on and on until there was nothing on this earth but his fingers still moving and moving and moving. There was not even enough air left to scream.

She hung, suspended in space forever, one single raw nerve flying apart with pleasure.

Then it was ebbing in hard throbs and the world came rushing back in to the volcanic crater she had just left in the bed. She fell back into her body, and then back onto the mattress, gasping and twitching and riding long slow pulses of pleasure that throbbed out from where Sawyer's fingers were still inside her.

What a way to lose a bet.

She shut her eyes and waited for him to either withdraw or start gloating: she no longer cared which, it was just too good. What he had done, what he was still doing, was just too damn good. So she lay there, breathing heavily, and just floated on the warm pulsing tide.

"OK, let's get it over with." She heard his growl and rolled her head to look at him. (God, even her neck felt wobbly.) He was lying next to her, head on the pillow now, panting, slicked with sweat and glaze eyed, as she had to be.

"What?" She said stupidly, twitching as he withdrew his fingers and fell clumsily, fully, onto his back.

"Go ahead and crow, Freckles." He told her. That's when she registered what he was telling her, and felt the evidence in her hand and against her hip. She somehow found the co-ordination to grin and marked the air with a shaky finger. He growled in mock annoyance. "Yeah, you win, for now. But don't get too cocky, darlin'. I still got plenty of tricks up my sleeve."

"And you think that I don't?" She rolled over, and he pulled her into his side. She draped a heavy arm over his damp ribcage in a loose limbed hug.

"Oh, I know you do! But I'm gonna win in the end." He declared and then yawned.

"Not if I win first." Kate countered, looking up at him from where she was resting her head against his chest.

"Hoh!" He squeezed her against him. "Cocky!"

"Yep!" She told him cheekily. And abruptly, Sawyer was grinning down at her, suddenly all dimples and little boy, though he was definitely no child. The smile lit up his face, the room, like no other had since she had met him. She stared at it in wonder.

"What?" He asked, the grin fading into puzzlement.

"I don't think I've ever seen you really smile before." She said and watched him take that comment in. His expression began to cloud over and the bewilderment turned to something even less certain, less confident, than that. She could practically see his thoughts turning inward. "Hey." She squeezed his ribs with her arm. "Stop that. Whatever it is you're doing: stop it. So, you have a cute smile, that can't be news Sawyer – not with your history." She pressed a kiss to his chest. "What, you're telling me of all the one night stands you 'claim' to have had, not one of them commented on those sexy dimples?"

"'Claimed'?" He suddenly frowned, though those dimples were interfering with the threatening expression he was clearly trying to make. "'Claimed'? I drank the godammned whisky didn't I? Can't lie when you play 'I never'? It's against the rules."

"Rules? Since when did you ever follow any rules?"

"Well, I follow that one."

"Sawyer, be quiet."

"You started this Freckles. Man's got to defend his reputation?"

"What, southern perverts have reputations now?"

"Godamn it woman! How can you be so fucking coherent after-"

"Hmmm, I guess you must be losing your touch."

"Wh- I- Oh, you're gonna get it now!"

"Promises promises. What are you- Oh, Oh god-"


	5. Chapter 5

He felt like shit: seven different shades of it. And he was hungry.

And Kate was missing from the bed.

The last bit was what made him open his eyes. It made him feel the empty mattress alongside him and roll his head to look at the spot she should be occupying. She should be right there, her head on his chest, her warm naked body pressed in close, right where he'd left her – right where he'd been holding her tightly against him in a tangle of arms and legs. But somehow, during the last hours (was it even day anymore?) she had slipped free and disappeared. She wasn't in the bunkroom any longer, he could feel it.

Maybe, he thought, she was one of those hot sleepers and had slipped away to find a cooler spot to sleep? Maybe. He'd been with women like that in the past, women who had needed to sleep cool in bed, and it had never bothered him. He'd never had much time for cuddling up anyway, not for many many years. Not since… Well, a long fucking time. When he though about 'cuddling' now he assigned it neatly to the job, a thing tolerated for the ends it would bring him. Besides, having the women push him away put the fault firmly back on them for their waking up alone.

But this morning, without even thinking about it, he'd reached for the woman in his bed and instigated the dreaded act himself.

In fact, the last thing he could remember in the seconds before he had fallen into a deep exhausted quicksand sleep was the feel of her in his arms as he gathered her close. He could still feel the slide of her smooth naked skin against his, and the wonder he'd experienced that she suddenly felt so fragile in his embrace, all delicate bones and long slender limbs. She had touched him with so much fierce passion as they came together again and again this morning, showing him each time just how much strength and determination and fierce desire were in that body and mind, that to feel her so delicate and vulnerable in his arms now unravelled his senses and spun his cruder desires into something finer, something terrifying. He was so unnerved, he had refused to think any further and had instead acted and gone further than cuddling. He had wrapped himself around her, tangling her up in his limbs, and bringing her snug against him, pressed in close to his chest where he could keep her warm against the non-existent chill. And to his astonishment she had not only let him, she had drawn her arms and legs inside his protective cage, huddling like a sleepy child against his chest, her head tucked under his chin and her soft warm breath bathing his skin with every exhalation.

He had lain like that, fighting sleep, fighting against the need to move his abused and aching shoulder, waiting to feel her fall asleep in his arms. He had often heard it said that sex was the ultimate act of trust between two people, but he knew this was wrong. It was one thing to get naked and sweaty with someone, he'd lost count of the times he'd done that, but it was entirely another thing to then shut your eyes and sleep with them still in the room. He knew. And he knew she knew it too. So when he felt her become boneless in his arms a few minutes later, and felt the rhythm of her breathing change, the terrifying new thing that he had been avoiding swelled up inside his chest, choking him, and he knew he was done in.

He had been convinced that she was the one dicing with her own destruction by allowing him inside her defences, but now he knew he had been wrong. It wasn't Kate who was flirting with ruin, it was him.

And now he had woken up alone and the space beside him was cool to the touch. And he knew it was nothing to do with overheating. The pain of that realisation made him feel sick. Like someone had taken a baseball bat to his belly. Fuck. He felt sicker than shit.

That's when, for some unfathomable reason, he suddenly realised that something else was amiss: something was different about the bed. He touched the sheets. They were new. What the fuck? He sat up. Kate's clothes were gone. The beside table, that he knew had taken a thump or two in the throes of passion and had spilled its contents, was back in order by the bed. And there was something, his cologne maybe, ghosting through the air. What the hell? Someone had tried to cover up. Someone had cleaned up. Kate…?

Gotta hide the evidence…

The confusion passed and the anger that followed was volcanic and he tore the blankets away from his legs, hurling himself out of bed. And there, over the bedside chair were his jeans: hung like fucking maid service had called. He snatched the pants and hauled them on.

Gotta hide the evidence. Was that it? Can't let anyone know what she had been doing, 'cause it was one thing to play with him in private, but quite another to have the neighbours walk in on it, on the aftermath. Can't risk them comin' aknockin' on the door and see the-

He stopped mid zip.

Jack. This was all about Jack. The good doctor was forever making house calls to the bunkroom, poking him awake at all hours and fussing needlessly with his bandages – and chatting to Kate. Because this is where she had been since he had been brought back to camp. So that's where Jack came to visit. Freckles was nobody's fool, she'd know what was going on. So she had tidied up the evidence for Jack's sake. Sawyer yanked the zip up and knocked the chair aside as he charged out of the room.

"Woah dude!" Hurley said from across the room where he was sitting behind that damned computer. Sawyer ignored him, glaring around the room. He was so angry he was having trouble thinking, and it took two goes around the room to take in the fact that she wasn't there. "Ah, its good to- Looking for someone?" Jabba continued, starting to speak in nervous half sentences. "Ah 'cause there's nobody here except me and, ah, you, of course. Ahm, K-kate isn't here."

"Where is she then?" Sawyer spat, taking two long strides across the room and making the dark haired man lean back in his seat.

"I don't know. The beach maybe, she left with Jac-" Sawyer didn't wait to hear more. He took off for the beach camp.

"Jack, yeah." Hurley trailed off watching the crazy-eyed southerner take off out of the Hatch door. "Yeah, and they were arguing pretty bad, but yeah, you don't wanna hear about that apparently… OK. Bye." Woah. That was one messed up fella. One messed up dangerously fruity fella. And they call me nuts, Hurley thought, turning his attention back to the flashing cursor on the computer screen. He sighed and ate a chip.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Kate pushed into the clearing around the beach camp, and despite the smothering humid heat of the island, she felt chilled. All the warmth of the morning with Sawyer had been lost, stripped from her skin, as she fled along the jungle trail from the Hatch to the beach away from her pursuer.

It was almost impossible to believe that less than an hour ago the day, the world had seemed changed and made anew - as if a tropical rain had visited whilst she had been sleeping, and washed away the darkness to reveal a bright sunlit patina that had been hidden there just waiting for the downpour to reveal it. Her waking had been a languid rising through warm and heavy wrappings of sleep; a slow phasing in of consciousness: becoming aware of the smooth sweat-damp skin and firm muscle of Sawyer's chest under her cheek; his heavy arms that were keeping her pressed flush against him; and the tangle of his legs with hers - the scratch of his hair against her skin. And the wonderful musky male smell, free from that god awful cologne, all around her. She had lain quietly listening to him breathe, listening to the healthy steady heartbeat, luxuriating in the feel of him and enjoying how well they seemed to fit together – like puzzle pieces or, she smiled to herself, two very friendly octopi.

They had come together again and again on the narrow bunk, unwilling to stay apart for more than a few minutes. She had been taken by surprise with the depth of his attentions. That he was neither consumed with his own needs, nor obsessed with working her to body to orgasm as if she was simply there to gratify his strutting ego, was a revelation. Not that she didn't climax, more than once, but his ministrations seemed less about that than about his pleasure in her. That first time, when she had refused to play his swooning conquest, his reaction had been completely unexpected. She had thought, as he literally swept her off her feet and took control of her body with such assuming arrogance, that she was in for a battle to stop him taking complete macho control, but his obvious enjoyment and excitement when she pushed back had surprised and then delighted her.

Then, as his injuries and recent illness began to overcome his enthusiasm, she had been literally stunned to find herself clumsily pulled into his arms, against his chest, and pinned there with all the force his injured arm had left in it. Her first instinct was to resist the confining embrace and the sudden overwhelming intimacy it thrust in her face - t was a bizarre reaction. After the last few days, and turning her new reckless leaf, the fear she suddenly felt shocked her into immobility. But during the seconds that she froze, she became aware of the awkwardness of Sawyer's grip, the stiffness in his limbs, the over tight hug and the artlessness unease that was making him all hard planes and angles where he should be warm and yielding. His good hand was in a fist against her back and his weaker one was shifting all over the place as if he had no idea what to do with it. She blinked. He really didn't know what to do with it. The realisation was as shocking as her sudden fear: for all Sawyer's sexual prowess, this clumsy attempt to – and she hesitated to use the term, but - cuddle was as desperate and inelegant as a child's. How could he be so incredible in bed, but be so raw and awkward at this most simple of acts? She thought, however, that she could make a pretty good guess as to how, and a rush of sadness tinged with tenderness swept through her, pushing away her fears.

So she relaxed against him, hoping that he would catch on and follow suit. If he didn't she was probably going to suffer some sort of oxygen deprivation induced brain damage, but she could no longer bare the thought of pushing him away. He had just inadvertently revealed to her another chink in his armour and she would not sling any arrows through it. So instead, she made herself let go of her own tenseness and moulded herself into him, pressing her over-sensitised breasts into his ribs, touching her belly to his and further twining their legs, showing him without words that she wanted him to hold her – and that it was not necessary to hold her captive against 'escape'. She pulled her arms inside his so that her palms were pressed against his chest next to her face and her elbows were tucked in close to her sides. And then she waited.

And waited.

And fell asleep waiting. When she awoke in a few hours time, sleep had taken the stiffness from his muscles and she was simply engulfed rather than smothered. So she lay there, enjoying the feel of him, alive and fast on the road to full recovery. After a time she raised her head to look at his sleeping face, turned towards her on the pillow. Though she would never (at least not yet, she had a strange feeling that telling him that too soon would cause problems) tell him so, Sawyer was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Kate reached up to trace one finger over the nearest high cheekbone, thinking that he really, really needed a haircut, when suddenly voices passed by the locked bunkroom door and reality came barrelling back to smack her in the face. She withdrew her hand without touching him and sighed against his chest. Dammnit. She knew what she had to do. She wasn't ready to face the rest of the camp just yet, alone, so there was only one thing for it. Clean up. It was a very good thing that Sawyer was sleeping so soundly it made the clean up that much easier and faster - with so much less grousing.

But then Jack had…

Oh god, Jack…

"Kate!" She heard the doctor in the jungle behind her, gaining. She wasn't going to be able to make it to the beach before he caught up. Then what? Jack wasn't going to stop until he said his piece so if she did not stop now he would end up finishing his diatribe within hearing distance of everyone in the camp. That, she could not bear. So she came to a stumbling halt in a small clearing off the main track, every limb vibrating with dread for what was to come. "Kate, don't run off on me again!" Jack called again as he lunged into the small space behind her. "What-" He panted. "What's going on? What was going on back there? Kate-?"

Oh god. Here it was. Here was the thing, the moment, she had known might come, even if she hadn't known until Sawyer awoke just which man she would have to have this conversation with. But even though her die was cast, she could not bring herself to turn around and see the angry disappointment and disbelief in his dark eyes. God, in so many ways this would have been better if Sawyer had been standing behind her, rather than Jack. Sawyer, for all his verbosity, did not really place much value on talk. He was more interested in action: his own and everybody else's. She supposed that was why he was so good at conning: he did not need people to speak to know what they were thinking or what they were about to do. So one short, loud unanalysed argument and her walking away plus/minus her pulling his hands off her arms, would have mostly finish the matter with the southerner. She understood that way of doing things.

But Jack… The doctor was a whole other story. She crossed her arms under her breasts and grabbed at the skin of her biceps in sudden near panic. This was turning into a repeat of yesterday…

"Kate?" Jack was closer still. She could clearly hear the volatility of the emotions that were driving him: hurt, anger, confusion, and worst of all: disappointment. Jack was the only person she had ever met who thought so much of her that he became so distressed when she failed to live up to his lofty expectations - time and time again. And as it had yesterday, the pained despair in his voice brought her to a complete stop, physically and mentally, and forced her to stand and face herself. All her bad and failed choices, all her mistakes, all the lost opportunities from this moment stretching back a lifetime; all the painful shameful things she kept buried and purposely ignored rose up inside her like a deep bruise until she was aching all over and trembling impotently with the need to flee, yet trapped in this clearing, inside herself, with the knowledge that she could not – that Jack would not let her. And like yesterday, the overwhelming fear and pain that triggered within her combined into an explosive mix of terrible shame and raw anger. But, contrasting yesterday, she was prepared and managed to keep herself from detonating into some wild expression of both emotions that would lead to - things. But she had to stop this. She had to stop it now. The choice she had made with Sawyer had not felt wrong this morning and she had to hold on to that memory, though the emotions Jack was enflaming inside her was making her begin to doubt herself, to doubt Sawyer, to doubt every action, every decision, every thought she had had since the southerner had been returned to them.

Taking a deep breath she turned around.

"What do you want from me Jack?" She asked his chest.

"What do I want? Kate, what do 'you' want?" Jack demanded. She couldn't answer him for the bloackage in her throat. God, she did not want to hurt him like this. He was a good man; a fine man. And here she was, setting him aside for a man like Sawyer. No doubt, in his world, such a thing was unthinkable, and she was not sure she would ever recover from this fall from grace in his eyes. Despite everything, that hurt more than anything had in a long long time. "You want-" Now it was Jack's turn to choke on his words. "You want – him. Is that it? Is that your choice?"

"Yes." She could barely force the word out. She could not look at him.

"I don't understand." He said after a long pause. She heard him exhale. "W-" He tried, paused and tried again. "Why Kate? Why him?" Why not me? She heard his real question and could not answer it. "Kate."

"What do you want me to say Jack? What can I possibly say that won't make this more difficult than it already is?"

"Well, you can start by answering my question: not leaving me hanging like this." She could hear the irritation in his voice as disappointment gave way to anger. She felt her own anger begin to surface.

"I don't owe you anything Jack. My choices are my own and I don't need to justify them to you!" She looked him in the face for the first time since he had caught up with her.

"Great." Jack pursed his lips, his hands coming to rest on his hips. "Fine." He nodded glaring around the clearing before bringing his heated gaze back to her face. "So that kiss meant nothing did it? You were playing me?" He glared. "And just now, in the Hatch. Are you playing him as well? Who else are you playing with? Michael? John?"

"Fuck you Jack!" She snapped back, genuinely and purely angry herself now. How dare he talk to her like that! "I don't owe you anything and I don't have to listen to this!" She took a step back and turned away.

"Kate!" She heard him behind her. She could hear the anger in his voice blended with some remorse now, but she was too incensed to care. Damn him. She heard his footsteps behind her. Before she could leave the clearing she felt his fingers curl around her shoulder. "Wait. Please. I'm sorry." She shrugged him off. "Shit. Please don't go. I'm sorry; I should never have said that. I just-" Despite herself, she came to a stop. "I just don't understand. Why him? Why Sawyer? Of all the people here." She looked up at him where he was standing not two feet from her, shoulders slumped, hands dangling by his sides. He looked so upset, so defeated; she felt her anger begin to cool and she dropped her own crossed arms and sighed.

"Jack, I-"

"Well now, is this a private party or can anyone join in?" A familiar drawl suddenly came from behind Jack and the doctor swivelled on his heel to look back toward the track. As he moved back Kate saw Sawyer standing barefoot and bare-chested just inside the ring of trees that marked out the small open area. He looked terrible: sweating, hair plastered across his forehead, muscles twitching with the effort it must have taken to walk this far, and so pale it was terrifying. His eyes were two dark burning coals against the chalk of his skin.

"Oh my god, Sawyer are you-?"

"What are you doing out here?" Jack cut her off.

"Could ask you the same thing doc." Sawyer took a step into the clearing. "For that matter, could ask you as well Freckles. This ain't exactly where I expected to find you this mornin'." His narrowed eyes were very clearly directed at her. Kate frowned, nonplussed. Sawyer took another step into the clearing and swayed on his feet. Jack lunged forward, clearly in doctor mode now. Sawyer did not let him make contact.

"Back off Doc."

"Sawyer, stop, sit down!" Jack ordered, hands still hovering over the injured man's shoulder. "What the hell is the matter with you? Don't you understand: you can't be pushing yourself like this. Not yet. You nearly died, don't you understand that? How long is it since you ate anything?"

"Aw, I'm touched by your concern doc, but I gotta say I'm a bit surprised. Figured you'd be glad if this patient didn't make it." Sawyer was still looking her way, and Kate started to understand where this was coming from.

"Excuse me?" Jack asked, incredulous.

"Oh come on doc, we both know what's going on here."

"No, we don't know what's going on here, except that you are accusing me of breaking the first rule of medicine."

"Why don't you fill him in then, Freckles." He said, heat starting to filter in through the soft sarcastic drawl. She took in the tremble in the muscles along his forearms and suddenly realised that it was anger she was seeing, not fatigue. He had woken up alone this morning, come looking for her and found her with Jack – Oh shit. She hesitated. "Oh, I see, you want me to do it. That right?"

"Sawyer-"

"Seems Freckles' become a might shy doc. Which, I gotta tell ya, is kinda strange since she sure weren't at all coy this morning, if you know what I mean." He cocked a look at Jack. "Or may be you do know what I mean."

"Sawyer!" Kate barked at him, mortified, hurt and angry. "Stop it!"

"You gonna tell him then?" Sawyer challenged her, stepping forward again.

"Sawyer." Jack suddenly stepped in between them. "Just-" And Sawyer took a swing at him.

It was swinging arc of a blow, made clumsy with his weakness, which Jack sidestepped easily. Sawyer staggered forward with the momentum, turned to follow Jack's retreat, paused slightly as if he was suddenly having second thoughts, and dropped like a rock. Kate froze as Jack raced forward to the fallen man. She watched the doctor feel for a pulse, then sit back on his heels and sighed. He looked up at her and motioned to the man sprawled at their feet.

"Is this what you want?" He asked her. She found she couldn't answer.


	7. Chapter 7

He felt terrible: nauseous, exhausted, hollow and tremulous, his shoulder and arm aching to the bone. And there was a light shining straight through his clenched eyelids that would not go away no matter how much he batted at it or swore at it. It seemed to be always out of reach. He twisted on the scratchy uneven ground, trying to turn his head away.

"Cut that out, man." The light said in a strong English accent.

"Fucyou." Sawyer swore at it, keeping his eyes tight shut.

"Sawyer, I mean it. You're going to fall off the seat. You owe me three coconuts as it is; don't make it worse for yourself." The light replied nonsensically. "Can you sit up a bit?"

"Whathefuckorffsonnavafuckenb itemeasslikkensonnavabich-" He slurred back at it. If the goddamn limey light bulb wanted him to make it easier for it to shine in his eyes it had another thing coming.

"Charming." The light remarked. "I don't think this is going to work Rose. Maybe we should let him sleep. Jack will be back-"

"Jack said he had to eat something, so he's going to eat something. And he's darn lucky he's under doctor's orders to have this soup or I'd be feeding him soap with a mouth like that! Now, go around the other side and help me. That's it." The world suddenly lurched, and then there was chicken soup under his nose. Now he knew things were screwed up. Where on this island did Locke find himself a chicken to hunt? "I know you're awake somewhere in there." The other voice said. "So open up now." The warm metal edge of a spoon nudged his lower lip. He tried to turn away, but suddenly his mouth was full of lukewarm soup and he had to hurriedly concentrate on swallowing it down the right pipe (which was a damn site harder than he ever remembered it being). He coughed. More followed right after, and again without giving him room to pause, and suddenly he had to thrust aside thoughts of resisting or swearing for fear of choking on the endless spoons of soup.

"Hey Rose, that's pretty good!"

"You don't raise three kids, three 'boys', through every sort of ailment without learning a thing or two."

"I didn't know you had kids?"

"Uh huh. Three good boys. All grown up and left the nest now." The voice paused and so did the soup and Sawyer felt himself sinking immediately back into a deep sleep with the utter relief. "Alright, I think he's had enough now. Let's leave him be for a spell. Ooh, I'm stiff as a board. Charlie, help an old woman to her feet would you honey?"

The light and its pushy friend faded away like departing ships into sea fog, the world hushed with their parting, and he was instantly asleep.

When he woke again it was to the sound of strained voices. Men and women. All talking at once. He ignored them for a long moment, as he registered where he was: back on the beach. Lying on his now unfamiliar and, post bunk bed, very uncomfortable airplane seat with the sun shining right in his eyes. The warm tropical breeze ran its fingers though his hair; through the gaps in the shirt he was inexplicably now wearing. He opened his eyes and squinted around the painfully bright stretch of sand. And there they were, the noisy neighbours: Hugo, Jin, Sun, Charlie, a bunch of others he barely knew, chattering and panicking away (well, all except Jin who was, as usual, out of the loop and looking vaguely baffled), with no sign of their Commander and Chief. Jack was notably absent, as was… Sawyer felt his anger reheat, remembering the jungle confrontation and recognising the twin absence for what it was.

Fuck, he had been such a fool. He'd gone in like a whipped dog, all belly up and pissing himself with such a desire to please her, to be what she wanted, that he'd tried to throw away the one piece of himself that it seemed she had actually found to her liking: 'Sawyer.' He'd wondered if there was anymore to himself than 'Sawyer', wondered and fucking worried himself sick that there wasn't, and now the great god Irony had kicked him in the balls and rubbed his nose in the sick goddamn truth that the world didn't fucking 'want' there to be anything other than 'Sawyer'. That Kate didn't want anything but 'Sawyer' and all his nasty fucking tricks. He didn't know if that made her more screwed up than he was, but it didn't matter anymore. She'd woken up, realised her mistake, and gone looking for the good doctor, so all his ruminating and all his cursing and railing didn't amount to shit. She'd made her decision and moved on. And he hadn't even seen it coming. He twisted on the seat. He'd known it was too good to be true. He knew he hadn't deserved it. He knew it and he still rolled over and showed his belly like a fool, like the sort of sad sack he regularly picked as his mark.

Oh shit. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden swell of emotion. That was it! Enough! Enough! If there was one useful thing to come out of this fucking car crash of a day, it was that one useful piece of information: he was 'Sawyer'; and the world wanted 'Sawyer'. Everybody loved somebody to hate. Well then, he'd give them goddamn 'Sawyer'. He'd give them so much fucking 'Sawyer' they'd choke on it. She'd choke on it.

He sat up on the bed and swung his legs over the side, familiar raw anger rattling through his bones. It warmed him through and settled, burning, in his belly like a shot of JD. It felt like a homecoming.

"What do you mean 'took off'?" Mr StayPufft suddenly exclaimed. "By himself? That's crazy."

"He's gone after Walt. Jack and John have gone after him." Some woman he didn't recognise said.

Mike? Gone hiking back though the jungle. Alone? What the fuck was this? Sawyer pushed himself to his feet, keeping his arm close to his side.

"What's that?" He called out to the group. "What did you say?"

"Michael." The woman said, turning to look at him. "He took off after Walt."

"How long ago?" He asked and she shrugged. "Well, how long since the cavalry charge?"

"About 10 minutes, why?"

Sawyer ignored her and ducked into his tent. He pulled up his long abandoned pallet, throwing it aside and knelt to dig through the sand, scooping the rough grains aside with his good hand. He'd been keeping this little piece, safe and secure and hidden, for just this sort of emergency. And there it still was, the dull metal cover of the small strong box he'd found in the downed plane. He yanked the lid free and pulled out a small wrapped package. He stared at it, thinking. Shit. Why not? There was nothing left for him here.

When he re-emerged from the tent, the herd was still milling about, lost without their great cowpoke, Jack the Ass. He sneered at them, feeling a hot surge of contempt.

"So, which one of you folks' gonna point me in the right direction?"

"Dude, what are you doing? You can't go-" Hurley started.

"So stop me." Sawyer said with a smile that had no humour in it. He did not try to conceal the pistol in his hand and fat boy's eyes grew huge when he saw it pointed in his general direction. The rest of the herd grew quiet and still. "No? Well how about you stop tellin' me what I can and can't do, doughboy. Now, I repeat for the last damned time, which one of you folks is gonna point me in the right direction?"

"I liked him better when he was nearly dead." Someone commented in a loud theatrical whisper. Sawyer ignored them.

As he walked, Sawyer kept the pistol in his hand, fingers clamped around the grip, forefinger along the barrel ready to slide down to squeeze the trigger at a moments notice. He had kept true to the worn trail, leading out from the Hatch, for as long as he could. The jumble of overlaid boot tracks was clear on the thin muddy pathway, and he didn't need any sixth sense to keep him from straying, but somewhere halfway up the first open grassy hill, the track thinned and he had to slow to a steady walking pace as he strained to keep what was left of it in sight.

Ahead, across the small sea of rolling green hills, pocked here and there with thickets of gangly jungle trees and thorny bushes, if the pathway stayed as true, he was going to be pushing into jungle again – this time without a helpful track. Shit. He paused, breathing hard. This was tougher than he had thought it was going to be and he was a lot weaker than he'd realised. He had been walking for barely an hour and already he felt like dropping. So he took a small break and stood, and panted and grimaced and tried not to grab his shoulder, on the crest of the small hill and listened to the soft slither of the breeze through the grass. No sounds of voices came to him. No sounds of gunfire or shouting. He supposed that was a good thing, but it also meant he had to keep on towards the distant tropical forest - towards Mike and, now that he thought about it, towards the bastard that had put this hole in his shoulder that was aching so bad he wanted to bellow out some relieving obscenity.

Since that chick on the beach had told him what had gone down whilst he had been out to it, he'd had it in his mind to go after Mike, but the thought of returning the pirate's gift added an extra appealing dimension to this adventure. He put his head down, glared at the distant forest, and pushed on.

The trail was getting harder and harder to follow as he approached the jungle. The soft muddy ground on the pathway had left him clear imprints, and later the soft crushed grass of the hills had been almost as good, but now the ground was clearly drier and the grass less forthcoming with information. He swore under his breath. He would have to try to pick it up again in the softer ground of the jungle.

The wall of trees in front of him looked exactly the same as the one he'd just left. Except, now there was no pathway and it took him a good 10 minutes of precious time to find what he thought might be a sign: a small patch of crushed grass and mud that looked to him like it bore the imprint of a boot's tread. He entered the jungle. The lofty canopy closed over his head like a shroud. He brushed aside damp foliage, sticky leaves and tried not to slip on the mossy tree roots that seemed to pop up like plastic moles in a sideshow game, just at the wrong time and always in the wrong fucking place. He cursed, slipping and falling more than once. Yet, here and there he found marks and broken twigs and scuffed soil that looked like trail sign, and it kept him pushing forward.

Hours passed in stumbling and cursing moments, highlighted with banging his wounded shoulder into trees and getting more and more furious with the island, the pirates, with stupid fucking father's who should know better than taking off alone through this shit. Becoming more and more angry, and hating the fact that he hadn't been awake and there when Jack decided to get all heroic. For a start, it would have been useful to have Locke's great white hunter's eyes to find him a decent pathway free from these damned trees and roots and somewhere where the insects didn't have his name on their 'specials menu'.

Time passed by. It started to get dark.

No Mike. No John. No Jack. And no fucking Long John Silver to shoot.

And he was lost.

Fuck.

He came to a halt, panting and shaking. Beyond cursing with exhaustion, he sank down against a tree and sat in the mud, head drooped against his chest. The mouth of the gun poked, forgotten, in to the dirt.

"Don't move!" A voice suddenly spoke, softly somewhere out to the right. It was followed by a familiar sound, the click of a gun being cocked. "Don't make a sound."

"What-?" Sawyer raised his head, contrary to the last.

"I said, don't talk!"

"Mike? That you?"

"Shh!" Michael emerged from the thick green foliage to his right. He had a rifle raised and evidently loaded, pointed right at the man on the ground. Nervous sweat was stippling his brow and his movements were way too jerky for Sawyer's liking. The southerner stopped moving, stopped trying to talk. "Why are you following me?" 'Shit, I was really following someone!' "Who's with you?" The jittery man asked in a voice like sandpaper on wood.

"No one's with me, Mike." Sawyer whispered back, eyes now fixed on the mouth of the rifle. Shit. The guy had gone dark side and no one had thought to mention this little fact? He stayed completely still.

"Bullshit!" Mike thrust the gun at him. "Last time I saw you we all thought you were about dead. So you didn't come out here alone. Where are the others?"

"There ain't no others."

"Don't fuck with me Sawyer. I do not have the time for games."

"I ain't fucking with you! Do you see anyone with me? Where the hell are they then? Waiting to throw you a surprise party?" He snapped. He was too damned tired for this. A wave of exhaustion rolled through him and he sagged against the tree. "I'm too tired for this shit Mike. You wanna shoot me, go ahead. Getting sort of used to it."

"You're really out here alone?"

"Yeah, mores the pity. Could really do with a cappuccino right about now."

"You're insane coming out here like this, alone, with a bullet hole in your shoulder. You really do have a death wish don't you?" Michael suddenly withdrew the gun and a second later a water bottle was thrust in his face. "Here. Keep this." Sawyer took it without question and secured it between his legs so that he could attack the screw cap with his good hand.

"Where are you going?" He asked the armed man and sucked down a good half of the water from the bottle.

"I'm going after my boy." He said as he looked around the jungle, alert and antsy. "And I have to go."

"Wait, I'll come with you." Sawyer dumped the water bottle and jammed the lid back into place.

"I don't think so. You'll slow me down."

"I was fast enough to catch you."

"That's because I let you catch me! You are one noisy sonnavabitch Sawyer. I had to let you catch up before you brought the whole island down on me."

"Well, pops, either way I'm here now." Sawyer replied, hauling himself up using the mossy tree as a prop. He leaned heavily against it. "And, I brought my very own peashooter. Be a shame to go home without trying it out." He brandished the small pistol with a cocky grin. Michael just looked at him.

"Why do you want to come with me, man?"

"Us raft-ateers gotta stick together Mikey. One for all and all for one and all that shit." He dropped the grin. "I've come to help you get your boy back."

"No you haven't."

"Shit, Mike. Don't start that with me again. I've already got a hole in my shoulder to show for trying to help your kid. What else do you want: a leg off?"

"Yeah, and that's it isn't it." Mike nodded. "You want some payback. This has nothing to do with Walt. You just want to shoot that guy that shot you."

"Yeah, that too." Sawyer said ignoring Mike's disgusted look. "Nothing wrong with payback. But if we get your kid back and I don't get a shot at Cap'n Barbosa, I can live with that."

"No."

"Fuck it Mike-"

"No! I can't take any chances, I gotta go alone. That's what he said-"

"Who said?"

"I'm not talking to you anymore Sawyer. Go home."

"No. I walked all this goddamn way and I ain't going home now."

"Well, you aren't coming with me." Michael said with complete finality. He took a fresh grip on his rifle, staring at Sawyer. The southerner stared back, implacable. "I'll shoot you man. I swear. You follow me and I'll shoot you dead."

"No, you won't." Sawyer replied. "Ain't got murder in you Mike."

"You don't know what I got in me! Someone stands in between me and my boy and I got fucking genocide in me man." Michael retorted, starting to breathe hard. He was psyching himself up, Sawyer realised; trying to work himself up to a point where he could do just what he said, or at least do one part of it. Sawyer stared at him, feeling all his good-ol'-boy macho bullshit falling flat inside him. He recognised that look in Michaels eye. He'd seen it through the gap between the jam and his bedroom door all those years ago, when Momma thought was safe under his bed. She would never know that he hadn't stayed there. He couldn't. Not with Daddy yelling and roaring like that. He'd run to the door, terrified that he was gonna hit her again, but too frightened to go help her so he peered through the gap and saw this same look in his father's eyes right before he-.

"Don't do this Michael." He finally said.

"What the hell are you-?"

"Let me go with you. I don't keep up, fine: leave me behind and I'll stay there and stay quiet." He stared at the other man. "Don't go out there looking for murder. You'll find it. And Walt will be without a Daddy.

"Two is better than one, no matter what anyone told you. Shit, they don't got to know about it. Besides, I already got one bullet hole. If it comes down to the wire, another ain't gonna bother me none. And better me than you anyway."

"What-?" Michael was staring, bug eyed and speechless. "Who the hell are you?"

"Nobody you need to know. Now, we going or what?" Sawyer kept Michael's eyes on his and they stared at each other for a time. Sawyer could practically see the thoughts rushing through the other man's mind, and he could see the balance shifting in his favour as he ran through the calculations, the possible scenarios. Sawyer waited, not moving, not wanting to give the other man any reason to go back the other way.

Then a twig snapped.

They both dropped to the ground, guns raised, heads going back and forth like crazed tennis fans.

Footsteps. Sawyer found their direction and wagged a finger, pointing. Michael nodded and they both waited, barely breathing. More than one set of feet were coming from somewhere out to the left, deeper into the jungle. Sawyer eased the hammer back on his pistol and pushed the muzzle slowly through the leafy bush in front of him. When the time came, he did not want to waste time aiming.

More footsteps and the sounds of crackling undergrowth.

And Locke suddenly emerged from the jungle. Then Jack, carrying something large and awkward. The southerner sighed and let the hammer back down on the gun. He pulled his arm back.

"Hey Mike!" Sawyer hissed, jerking his head back to look at the other man. But he was gone. Gently bobbing fern fronds were all that remained. Sawyer stared after him, but there was no sign. Damn it.

He turned back to the approaching duo and froze.

Oh god.

Oh god no!

"Kate!" Sawyer burst from the bushes at a dead run. Both Jack and Locke stopped dead, the tracker raising the stick his had in his hands ready to strike. Jack nearly dropped his precious cargo, swore and righted himself. Sawyer ignored both of them. He came to a halt right in front of Jack. "What the fuck happened? What the fuck!" He reached out his hands but dropped them before he made contact. He swept his eyes the length of the unconscious woman, seeing nothing but her closed eyes, her pale face and the horrifyingly limpness of her body, dangling like a ragdoll over Jack's arms. Ohfuckohfuckohfuck. He couldn't think. Sparkles glittered and flashed in front of his eyes.

"Sawyer, back off!" Jack barked at him. Locke grabbed his arms and pulled him back. "Back off!"

"What the hell happened?" Sawyer lunged forward again. "What's the matter with her?"

"She's alive." Locke had a good grip now and pulled him back. The younger man stumbled, suddenly light headed, everything swimming in front of his eyes. "Breathe dammnit! What are you doing out here?"

"What happened?" He gasped out again, ignoring the question.

"The Others happened." Locke said as Jack began walking again. Sawyer surged forward, suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to wrench Jack's burden from him and run across the treetops back to the safety of the camp. But he couldn't, he knew he just didn't have the strength back yet. Maybe not enough even to get himself back. "Come on, walk with me. Jack thinks she'll be all right. Just a concussion."

"He 'thinks' she'll be all right?" Sawyer spat. He surged after the doctor again. "You 'think' she'll be alright. You don't know? What the hell kind of doctor are you?"

"The only one you have Sawyer, so shut up and walk." Jack called back over his shoulder, not even breaking stride. His tone was hard and cold and brooked no argument. So Sawyer followed, hard on his heels, staring at one delicate hand that had slipped down and was dangling lifelessly, rocking in time to Jack's brisk march.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK - last chapter. Another racy one. Please note the explicit rating and do not read it if you don't like that sort of thing.  
> Love to know what you guys think of it.

The bunkroom door was shut. It had been shut for a long, long time. Sawyer sat at the small table in the open area of the Hatch and stared at it. When they returned from the jungle Jack had taken Kate inside the small room, followed by a small cloud of frantic castaways whom he had promptly sent packing. All except Sun. Then he had shut the door. Sometime later, the doctor emerged looking haggard, and they stared at each other without saying a word. Then the doctor left and Sawyer was the only one left out in the rec area (except for Cindy on sitting at the weird ass computer, but he wasn't counting her) staring at the door.

He wanted to go in there, but he didn't want to. Jack had her now and there was no place left for him. He should go back to the beach. It was the middle of the night and he should go back to the beach and drink himself to sleep – he still had a stash or two of JD left untouched. He should.

He sat there and did nothing, but stare at the door.

"How is she?" A voice suddenly said. Sawyer did not look up, even when Locke pulled out a chair from the little table and sat down.

"I'm not in the mood Locke." Sawyer pre-empted him, still staring at the door. Shit, she had looked so vulnerable and small in Jack's arms. Delicate as newborn Aaron had looked – like at any moment that last tiny breath could be his last… Sawyer brought his fist down very slowly on the table, the knuckles turning white. He wanted to kill every last fucking 'Other' there was on this island. Kill them slow and hard. He pressed his fist into the cold plastic.

"I wasn't going to say anything. I'm just worried."

"Why, what did Jack say?" Sawyer demanded, alarmed.

"He didn't tell you?"

"Didn't ask."

"He told me that she was going to be fine." Locke sounded puzzled. "She woke up-"

"When?"

"Before he went to get a shower. He said she was groggy, had a headache, but that she was going to be fine." Sawyer sat in silence, digesting the news. Jack hadn't breathed a word about that. Sawyer relaxed and then clenched his fist again, feeling the slow slow burn of real anger starting all over. "You- you didn't ask?"

"Why would I do that?" Sawyer said voice like ice. Maybe she told Jacko not to tell him.

"Because you want to know. You wouldn't have been sitting out here for the last two hours staring at the door if you didn't want to know."

"Locke, don't you get all Obewan Kenobe on me. I'm telling you." Sawyer warned, eyes still pinned on the silent door. "Start that with me now and they'll be finding you for weeks. Won't be enough left for a funeral."

"I'm not trying to start anything. I'm just surprised is all. You and Kate seemed to be getting along just fine lately."

"Yeah well, you know what they say: looks can be deceiving." Sawyer said, and the door to the bunkroom opened. He stiffened, breath catching. Sun emerged. He sagged back in his chair.

"How is she?" Locke called out to the slim asian woman.

"She is sleeping." The woman replied. "Jack asked me to stay with her tonight, but I must go to my husband." She went on with some anxiety. "Jack was very angry when he left. I think he wants to go back into the jungle. I know Jin will want to go with him and I-" She paused and Sawyer could feel Locke's eyes on him. It was too much. He stood up with a jerk making Sun step back in alarm. And walked out of the Hatch.

The not quite black jungle night was nearly as warm as the day. Here, protected from the cool evening ocean winds, the island never really got a chance to cool. But Sawyer felt cold. An all over chill that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the woman lying in the Hatch, injured and alone. He wanted to go to her, he wanted to take off back to the beach and drink himself into oblivion; he wanted to go after Mike, he wanted to stand here and kill the next person who showed themselves. He was tearing apart inside with this anger that was building and building with no where to go. He stuffed his fists into his pockets and began pacing around the clearing.

Fucking Jack. He should have been looking out for her. He should have stopped this from happening. He should be here, now, sitting by the fucking bunk bed going out of his mind, not running around where ever else the fuck he was.

And suddenly there he was: large as life, coming back in from the direction of the beach, and something in Sawyer just snapped.

He went for him and they went down in a tangle of flailing arms. Everything went red and all the pent up anger and fear came rushing out. Jack was fighting back and everything was a wild blur.

Then, just as fast as it all started, it was over. And he couldn't move.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jack was screaming in his face, blood running from a cut on his lip, eyes red rimmed and wild barely a foot from Sawyer's face. And Sawyer couldn't move. Jack was sort of sitting on him, one hand on his neck, but he couldn't feel anything. Fuck, he was paralysed!

"What's the matter with you you stupid stupid bastard?"

"Jack, what's going on?" That was Locke and Jack turned his head to look at him. "What are you doing?"

"Back off John. I've had it. I've had it" He roared at the older man.

"OK. OK." John had both hands up, talking to the doctor as if he was a jumper about to go over the edge. 'Too late Mr Clean'. "Just take it easy."

"Now you are going to listen to me Sawyer. You listen to me." Jack said, looking at him again, and still wildly angry, but now speaking in an eye-of-the-storm calm that was capable of murder. "I have had enough of your shit and it's going to stop.

"You're pissed, OK, got it. Well, here's some news: so am I. Between you and Kate I-" Sawyer blinked. "Oh, that's it is it. God, you're such a- You listen to me and you listen good because I am never going to have this conversation with you again.

"Kate chose Sawyer. She chose. She chose you, though I can't see why. The way you treat her, the way you treat everyone… She came into the jungle because of you this morning Sawyer. Because of you! She had to get away from you and that's why she was there, you stupid idiot.

"I'm going to get up now, and in a minute or two you will be able to move again. In that time I want you to think about this. I'm giving you two choices. You start behaving like a human being or you leave the beach. I won't put up with this anymore and don't think that I won't act on what I'm saying.

"And, just so we're clear: if you hurt her again like you did this morning, this is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to what I'll do to you." Jack did not ask if he understood, but simply climbed off him and was abruptly gone.

Kate woke feeling awful. Her head was throbbing like a second, painful heartbeat. She tried to open her eyes and nearly yelped as the light stabbed into her eyes. Her head swam. Conciousness wavered, so that she barely felt the hand that stroked over her brow.

"Kate? Can you sit up?"

"No." She moaned. The thought was too stomach churning too contemplate. The voice retreated. She floated in a pained haze.

"Here." The voice returned bringing a straw with it. "Drink." She obeyed, and the awful taste of painkillers dissolved in water flooded her mouth. She grimaced. "All of it." The voice ordered. When she complied, the straw and she faded away back into nothingness.

When she woke again the pain was less, a background thump that was more like a mild hangover than her own personal inter-cranial jackhammer. Cautiously, she opened her eyes. The bunkroom. How painfully ironic.

She shut her eyes again as memories that should be wonderful, delicious and warm had turned cold, sad and bitter. John had been right; she had bitten off more than she could chew with Sawyer. It had been a foolish choice to pursue him. He couldn't trust her, he couldn't trust anyone, he was just too damaged for her to deal with, and she knew she couldn't take all the punches he would send her way if she stayed with him. She was no Oprah Winfrey heroine, she knew it. She had too much baggage of her own to deal with. The urge to run was always going to be with her and she knew that she would never be able to overcome it if she stayed with Sawyer. Wayne was right: she was no good, she would never be able to have anything good in her life. The last few days with Sawyer were just a reminder: now that it was over the pain of its loss was so great she wished she had never demanded to stay with him in the Hatch. Tears welled up behind her closed lids.

She had to get out of this room!

Gingerly, the young woman rolled onto her side and opened her eyes to check the distance to the door. And there he was: Sawyer, slumped in that uncomfortable chair, head on his chest overlong hair covering his face like a curtain, asleep. Beside him on the floor was the glass and drinking straw. She swallowed. Oh god, this just made it so much worse. Why couldn't he be on the beach where she had left him?

Oh so quietly Kate levered herself upright until she was sitting on the bed. Her head thumped its protest for long minutes and she rode it out in pained silence. She just had to get out of here. It didn't matter where she went to, just so long as it was away from here. Beside the bed Sawyer slept on and she could barely look at him.

Kate climbed slowly out of the narrow cot and found her shoes. She made for the door and her hand was on the latch when she felt him watching her. She had her back to him, but she could feel him awake and feel his direct gaze beaming into her shoulder blades. She paused.

"Don't make this any harder than it is Sawyer." She said, still not looking at him.

"Can't get any harder Kate." He replied and the surprise that he had used her name drew her gaze to him like a magnet. He was still slumped in the seat, only his raised head had changed and she was startled to see the dark bruise around his eye and another over one cheekbone. "Jack and me had a talk." He offered, still without any inflection in his voice.

She said nothing. Sawyer did not move.

"Seems I made a fool of myself yesterday morning."

"Yeah," She said, unable to keep the pain out of her voice. She wanted to run. This was just going to make it harder, but his use of her name, and where this seemed to be going, kept her anchored to the floor. "Yeah you did."

"I thought you and he-" He stopped and it was her turn to say nothing. If he was going to apologise, he would have to do it alone. "Can I blame it on low blood sugar?"

"No, you can't Sawyer." She replied, not helping him. "You really hurt me. How could you think I would do that after what happened between us?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do know Sawyer. You do. Something made you think that and I want to know what it is, or I am walking out." He grimaced, but did not answer so she started to go through with her threat.

"No! Kate. Wait, dammnit." He ran a hand over his face, clearly dreading the next few minutes, but as of yesterday she had no sympathy for it. "All right. All right. Dammnit.

"Why wouldn't you?" His expression became pained. "Look at me: I'm nothing. Dropped out of school at 14, never had an honest job after my last paper-round. Spent most of my life doing one wrong thing or another, and what's worse, knowing it was wrong and doing it anyway. I'm not a good person, Kate. I ain't good enough for you and I know it. Everytime I look at you I know it, and I know that he is. And I know that one day you're gonna know it too, if you don't already after yesterday."

Kate couldn't say anything. She just stared. How had all this been inside him all this time and she had not realised the extent of it?

"I ain't gonna stop you going out the door Kate, if that's what you're thinking about. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to do that anymore, and I can't promise you that if you stay. So, so, if you want to go. To him. Or, or just go. I won't make no fuss." He dropped his gaze to his bad hand, curled loosely in his lap.

"Sawyer, I-" She started, then stopped. What was she going to say? Rushing back into his arms at this point would be more than foolish, no matter how much she wanted to hold him and reassure him that she did not think him unworthy of her. If they started down that path, gave him tacit permission to explode and then win her back with some well chosen words, her mother's fate was waiting with sharpened teeth. "I have to think." And she fled the bunkroom.

It was late in the afternoon and Sawyer lay in his tent, on the low pallet. Despite everything, despite the hollow feeling in his chest, he was so exhausted from hiking all yesterday afternoon, fighting with Jack and then sleeping in a chair all night, he could not stay awake. Instead he dozed fitfully, tossing and turning on the lumpy mattress.

He knew he deserved her wrath, and that if she never came back, if he did indeed see her promenading down the beach on Jack's arm that he had earned nothing less. But fuck it was going to hurt like nothing had in a long long time. He rolled away from the mouth of the tent, curled up on his side and tried to stop thinking about – everything.

A cloud passed over the sun, darkening the inside of the tent. Fucking Freud, he thought with bleak irony. Then the cloud touched his shoulder and shook him. He jerked and rolled over. Kate. He watched her pulled the flap across the entrance to the tent and secure it top, middle and bottom. The interior of the small dwelling immediately darkened like mood lighting. He did not dare move, watching her with round eyes.

She knelt down. Her expression was deadly serious.

"You're never going to do to me what you did yesterday." She started in quiet voice. "Never again." She paused so he filled the space with a nod, feeling his heart starting to beat faster and faster. "If you do, I'm going to leave you in that same minute. And I won't come back." She paused and he nodded. And she seemed to relax abruptly, although she did not move from her kneel. Her face softened. "I am not your possession. I can't be locked up in your secret stash, and I will be talking to Jack. Probably tomorrow. Probably more than once. But that doesn't mean that I am not with you while I am talking to him."

"Kate-"

"Shh." Kate pressed her fingers to his lips. "I'm talking, so listen.

"I am with you because I want to be Sawyer, but I am not going to try to convince you of that. You're just going to have to trust me. Can you do that?" He nodded, not knowing if he could really do it, but vowing in that moment that if she stayed right there that he would kill himself rather than break this promise to her. "Good."

And she kissed him. Soft and chaste on the lips. God, he wanted her. He wanted to give himself to her, be her slave and spend the rest of eternity chained up like a dog at her feet if that was what she wanted.

Something small and cool and plastic was suddenly pushed in to his hand. He looked down and felt a slow grin lecherous pull at his lips. He looked up at her and found her smiling back at him.

"Look what I found." She said and he grabbed her, pulling her onto the lumpy mattress, kissing every part of her he could reach, almost losing the precious plastic packet in the process.

"You sure you wanna do this Freckles." He said when he had her tight to his chest, lying sprawled over him, long hair every where.

"Are you?" She suddenly teased, squirming against his groin. He pounced.

Everything felt so light, as if she was floating on high soft clouds, free and weightless as a bird, which was strange since she was here inside Sawyer's darkened tent, lying beneath him on his makeshift pallet of old clothing, secured firmly to terraferma by the weight of his body. But, regardless of reality, she felt like she barely inhabited her skin; merely anchored to the pleasure points whilst the rest of her floated as if buoyed upwards by a sweet summer breeze. God, listen to her, she was cracking up. And she knew who to blame.

After all the build up, when they finally came together it was in the most traditional of ways: Sawyer on top, lying over her, settled in the saddle of her open thighs; she below him, cradling him as he took the lead and moved between her legs. He rocked into her with quiet, almost reverential, deliberation; a whole body motion, so that the light smattering of his tawny chest hair rubbed deliciously against her breasts. She held him in return, wrapping her arms and legs around him, keeping him close as he slid over her, inside her. She felt so exquisitely sensitive to him like this: his every movement, his every breath, his every hungry look, was so concentrated, so intense; there was no part of what they were doing that she could deny. He had left her no where to hide herself. Even turning her head from him was impossible with his hands tangled through her hair. Only when he kissed her did he break eye contact, but even then he was simply demanding that she open herself to him in a different way, as he worked his mouth over hers so that their groans were swallowed before they could be heard beyond their cramped sanctuary. He kissed her now and she suckled his thrusting tongue, thinking that she had never felt as completely openly, gloriously, sensual and alive as she did right at this moment. She had never felt less like running, less like hiding.

And his cock. Oh god, his beautiful thick hard cock inside her at last, making her melt, making her more liquid than she could ever remember being in her life. He filled her completely, stretching, opening and stroking her slick swollen walls so firmly that she swore she could feel every ridge, every vein, as he pumped slowly inside her. And god, it felt so good. She tightened her inner muscles around him, suddenly overwhelmed with exquisite sensation and whimpered into his sucking mouth. Remembering his reaction in the bunkroom, and wanting suddenly for him to feel this same rush of feeling, she clawed along the smooth muscular planes of his back as she clutched and shook and mewled softly beneath him. The southerner arched against her scratching nails, shuddering between her legs, groaning his surprise and his pleasure into her mouth, and his steady rhythm faltered into a series of hard convulsive thrusts that made her tremble all the harder under him. For a moment she thought he was coming, and that she might too just from the intensity of his reaction, but within seconds he had stopped moving all together and had pulled his mouth away from hers, hovering above her, panting. His breath was hot against her skin.

"What are you doing?" She managed to rasp. Her mouth, now freed from his kisses, was barely in her control. Her lips felt so swollen and wet she could scarcely make herself form the words for her question. "Sawyer?" She shimmied against him, trying to encourage that delicious hard length into motion again.

"Don't!" He growled sharply, tense as rock all over. "Kate -! Don't move. I'm gonna-" He paused again, quivering, his cock jumping inside her. "Don't want- Not yet." Oops, she hadn't realised just how much he liked a little bit of pain with his pleasure.

"It's ok." She smoothed her fingers against his shoulders, sliding them down across his sweat-damp back, over the lines she had just scored, feeling the muscles there hardened with the strain of holding himself back from the edge. But, her whole body was humming, pulsing and throbbing, around his motionless cock. She desperately needed him to move. "You can-"

"No! Not without you. No." He interrupted and dropped his forehead to the crook of her neck. She could feel him struggling to control his breathing; heard him mutter to himself. Kate slid one hand upwards to stroke through the hair at the nape of his neck, giving in and holding him against her whilst he fought with himself to regain control. Stubborn, stubborn, proud, infuriating man, she thought with tender exasperation. She ran her hand down the long graceful bow of his back and over the swell of his rear, stroking the tight curves. She repeated the motion, enjoying the opportunity to explore the sleek lines of him, the firm muscles and smooth skin. She dipped her fingers into the tiny dimples either side of the base of his spine and traced the little knobs along his backbone. He shivered as she touched him, but made no complaint.

It was heading rapidly towards sunset outside the tent. The light that filtered inside through small frayed patches in the canvas had taken on a golden burnished glow that gave warm highlights to the few items Sawyer had stashed around his small home. It reminded Kate of long passed childhood winter nights spent warm and drowsy in front of the glowing coals in the hearth – when Wayne was gone on one of his long trips and things were safe and good and warm. She wondered again, briefly, if she was repeating her mother's mistakes. She could not deny that it was possible, but she hoped that she wasn't. She hoped with every fibre of her being.

Outside, she heard the voices of their fellow castaways: indistinct through the canvas and the increasingly gusty evening winds. By now the communal cooking fire would be lit, decisions were being made over menus, those rostered on for cooking were being chased and rounded up by hungry survivors, and all the while Sawyer and she were making love right under their noses. Kate was not an exhibitionist by nature, but in this moment, cradling this man with her whole body the thought sent a shiver of excitement through her as she continued to caress him.

She dropped a kiss onto Sawyer's bent head and he stirred against her, raising himself up on his elbows to meet her eyes. Without a word, and without breaking eye contact, he began to stroke inside her again. She sighed in pleasure, and gazed up at him, running her hands over his shoulders to feel the powerful muscles flexing and moving as he braced himself above her. She stroked down across his chest, tugging on the light scattering of hair, and moving down to feel the point where he was sliding against her breasts. She slid her arms back up and around his shoulders, held him, and concentrated on how good this felt.

She let her eyes slip shut, but jerked them open again when she felt him reach between them to press his thumb against her engorged clitoris and begin to gently knead the stiffened nub. Kate shuddered, biting down on a cry as hard bolts of pleasure shot through her groin, down each limb and through her nipples where they rubbed against his chest hair.

"Oh oh oh." She sobbed, abruptly near feverish with pleasure. He dipped forward for a soft wet kiss, his tongue pushing inside her mouth mimicking the thrust of his cock. He swallowed her moans, adding his own to hers. They broke away again, panting, and she writhed against his massaging fingers and hard cock as it continued to slide back and forth inside her. "Like that. Don't stop. Please."

"I ain't gonna stop Sassafrass." He growled, breathless, dipping his head to gently bite at her shoulder. "Never gonna stop. Gonna be good to you forever.

"God, you're so wet. So fucking tight." He suddenly said, panting above her and Kate moaned at his words, clutching at him, feeling herself reacting to the raw lust in his voice. It was impossible, but she could feel herself becoming even more liquid. His cock was sliding so easily into her now that instinctively she bore down on it, closing her muscles around him, wanting to ensure she felt every sweet motion. "Aw fuck. Sonnavabitch!" He growled, arching and jerking over her, almost sobbing himself now. And god she wanted him so badly that suddenly this wasn't enough. She needed him deeper, harder, faster. And that impulsive want came out in a low moan as she let her legs fall from his hips and splay for him:

"Sawyer, more. Harder. Need you to – to fuck me. Fuck me hard."

"Oh Christ. Kate, I- ." Sawyer moaned, his voice shaking, but he was quick to oblige her. Using both hands, he reached down to gasp and tilt her buttocks, changing the angle of his thrusts to rub against her g-spot, as he began to accelerate his movements. She gasped, arching and curling into him until he was so deep, invading her with such force, that the head of his cock butted against her womb with each powerful inward shove. It made her shudder and quake, thighs jerking with each deep penetration.

The hot liquid pleasure of earlier suddenly took on a new urgency, a new potential. She bucked and strained underneath him chasing the new intensity, whimpering and clawing at his back, as it built from pleasure into ecstasy. Her lover responded, growling her name into her bared throat, repeating it over and over like a mantra as he arched against her hands. She clutched at his buttocks, one hand around each taut globe, as he pumped himself into her. Then it was starting: a powerful fluttering deep inside. And she started to keen helplessly, almost mindless with the magnitude of the approaching climax. Sawyer took her mouth in another rough passionate kiss, smothering the sound as she raced towards and over the precipice.

Her orgasm burst through her until she was jerking in helpless spasms, inside and out, sobbing and weeping into Sawyer's mouth. Her conscious mind shattered into a thousand points of disconnected pleasure as he continued to pound into her. God, she had never come so hard in her life and it just would not stop. She shook and trembled and came and came until she thought it simply had to end or she would die from it. And then he too was convulsing against her and it was her turn to take up the tattered remains of her self control and grasp his head to mute his rough cries, to hold him as he quaked and shuddered beyond his control.

Then slowly the intensity began to fade and their lips parted as the need for air overcame everything. She felt Sawyer begin to settle against her, becoming heavy, panting against her shoulder thrusting only erratically and then not at all. His heart was pounding so strongly she could feel it against her own. She did not have the strength to hold him. Instead she lay there, gasping, staring blindly at the apex of the tent, watching the canvas ripple in the strong ocean breeze outside, feeling her inner muscles continue to rhythmically contract around him, even as all the rest of her body gave out and was limp. They lay that way for a long time, until she felt the delicious intense spasms inside her begin to slow and weaken and his cock begin to soften inside her.

With an annoyed groan Sawyer moved, rolling off, pulling out of her and stripping off the abused condom to toss it away into the tent. He rolled back to her, coming to rest against her side, propping his head against her shoulder. He kissed the slope of her breast.

"Think they heard us?" He asked after a long moment of silence. She heard the exhaustion, the utter satiation and the facetiousness in his voice all at once, and giggled. "What are you laughing at Mariah? Reckon it was you they heard. You gonna be able to leave this tent after that performance?"

"Me?" She pushed at him until they were both lying face to face on the low pallet, and reached up to sweep aside the sweat matted strands of his hair that had fallen over his eyes. She tucked them behind his ear and let her fingers trail over his cheek, his lower lip. "I don't think anyone will be looking at me, Pavarotti." She said with a smile.

"Pavarotti?" He huffed out a fatigued chuckle, running a hand over her shoulder and flank, coming to rest on her hip for a moment before ghosting upward again and drifting across her back. His fingertips started tracing abstract patterns over her skin.

"Yeah, Pavarotti. Three tenors."

"I know who Pavarotti is, Sweetness. Just not used to you throwing around nicknames is all." His lips twitched in a smile. "Pavarotti is ok for a first go, I guess."

"A first go? OK then what name would you have picked?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe Billy Idol."

"Bil-!" She laughed. "Billy Idol? You're serious?"

"What are you laughing at? Billy Idol is-"

"You are so stuck in the '80s. Billy Idol… You are insane. Oh my god, I'm in love with a crazy man."

"What did you say?" He suddenly stopped stroking her back, bringing his hand around to cup her shoulder, and she realised what she had indeed said. And that it was true. She was in love with Sawyer: completely and hopelessly in love with him. All of a sudden she felt as shy as a girl on her first date, rather than a woman recovering from sharing an amazing orgasm with the man she loved. She smiled up at him, but Sawyer was not smiling back, he was staring at her with an undecipherable expression.

"I said: I'm in love with a crazy man." She repeated after a moment's hesitation. He didn't respond. Then his eyes slid away from her face, coming to rest on the hand that was on her shoulder, his expression shifting from unreadable to something approaching pained - maybe even distressed. Oh god, she felt herself tear up inside, she thought they were passed this. A chill suddenly descended in the tent, she drew her hands back from touching him. "Sawyer?"

"Yeah." He suddenly breathed, and his thumb started making little circles on her shoulder. Soft and slow. He slowly turned back to her and she was dismayed to see his face set in hard planes and his eyes glittering dangerously in the last weak glow of the sun. Oh god, he didn't love her. Locke had been right about her failing all along. She felt herself begin to cry and squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears from coming. "The last person who said they loved me died."

"Wh-what?" Kate opened her eyes, blinking against the moisture that had gathered there.

"The last person. She died." His voice was thin and so quiet she had to strain to hear him. "She died trying to save my life."

"Who-?" Kate managed to whisper. Her mind was spinning.

"Momma. She told me she loved me and she tricked my Daddy into thinking I was at his Aunt May's. Pushed me under my bed and told me to stay there. Then he shot her. Then he came into my room and shot himself." Oh god, she felt ill with horror for him. She reached out to touch the harsh angles of his face. "Never let anybody say that to me again. Let 'em say it to Sawyer, for the job, but not to me."

"To Sawyer?" She started slowly, softly stroking his cheek and feeling the rough unshaved skin tingle her fingertips. "I don't understand. I know Sawyer isn't your real name but what-"

"It's James. My name's James Ford." He paused, looking straight at her, and she thought she finally understood. He took a deep breath: "I'm James."

"James." She said, sounding the word out loud, liking how it felt, liking how it fit him and knowing just what a gift he was holding out to her. Knowing, as she looked into his eyes that this was his apology, that he was giving her this final delicate piece to do with as she pleased, trusting her not to use it against him, but laying himself open to the possibility. Overcome, she took his face gently between her hands. "Hello James. I'm Katherine, though everybody calls me Kate. And I have to tell you something." She kissed him chastely on the lips. "I love you." She watched his eyes turn to liquid emerald and he was suddenly kissing her, hard. She rocked backwards with his lunge and he followed, coming to rest above her for the second time that afternoon. She tried to find his rhythm, to match the fervour of his mouth on hers, but suddenly realised that there was no cadence there, just raw feeling channelled straight at her. She could feel him shaking, and the tears that had been threatening her spilled over to run in thin streams over her temples. Then suddenly he was gone, pulled back into the shadows above her.

"Freckles - Kate?" She could hear the rough edge of tears in his voice.

"Y-yes?" She watched him come back down to her, coming within kissing distance, his breath hot and full of salt tears against her skin. She touched his face, feeling the moisture there. He leaned in closer still and whispered:

"I love you too."

The end.

Thoughts?


End file.
